How Hitler Consolidated Power in Germany and Launched A Social Revolution

The First Years of the Third Reich

by LEON
DEGRELLE

I. Who Would End the Bankruptcy?

"We have the power. Now our gigantic work
begins."

Those were Hitler's words on the night of
January 30, 1933, as cheering crowds surged past him, for five long hours,
beneath the windows of the Chancellery in Berlin.

His political struggle had lasted 14 years. He
himself was 43, that is, physically and intellectually at the peak of his
powers. He had won over millions of Germans and organized them into Germany's
largest and most dynamic political party, a party girded by a human rampart of
hundreds of thousands of storm troopers, three fourths of them members of the
working class. He had been extremely shrewd. All but toying with his
adversaries, Hitler had, one after another, vanquished them all.

Standing there at the window, his arm raised
to the delirious throng, he must have known a feeling of triumph. But he seemed
almost torpid, absorbed, as if lost in another world.

It was a world far removed from the delirium
in the street, a world of 65 million citizens who loved him or hated him, but
all of whom, from that night on, had become his responsibility. And as he knew -
as almost all Germans knew at the of January 1933 - that this was a crushing, an
almost desperate responsibility.

Half a century later, few people understand
the crisis Germany faced at that time. Today, it's easy to assume that Germans
have always been well-fed and even plump. But the Germans Hitler inherited were
virtual skeletons.

During the preceding years, a score of
"democratic" governments had come and gone, often in utter confusion. Instead of
alleviating the people's misery, they had increased it, due to their own
instability: it was impossible for them to pursue any given plan for more than a
year or two. Germany had arrived at a dead end. In just a few years there had
been 224,000 suicides - a horrifying figure, bespeaking a state of misery even
more horrifying.

By the beginning of 1933, the misery of the
German people was virtually universal. At least six million unemployed and
hungry workers roamed aimlessly through the streets, receiving a pitiful
unemployment benefit of less than 42 marks per month. Many of those out of work
had families to feed, so that altogether some 20 million Germans, a third of the
country's population, were reduced to trying to survive on about 40 pfennigs per
person per day.

Unemployment benefits, moreover, were limited
to a period of six months. After that came only the meager misery allowance
dispensed by the welfare offices.

Notwithstanding the gross inadequacy of this
assistance, by trying to save the six million unemployed from total destruction,
even for just six months, both the state and local branches of the German
government saw themselves brought to ruin: in 1932 alone such aid had swallowed
up four billion marks, 57 percent of the total tax revenues of the federal
government and the regional states. A good many German municipalities were
bankrupt.

Those still lucky enough to have some kind of
job were not much better off. Workers and employees had taken a cut of 25
percent in their wages and salaries. Twenty-one percent of them were earning
between 100 and 250 marks per month; 69.2 percent of them, in January of 1933,
were being paid less than 1,200 marks annually. No more than about 100,000
Germans, it was estimated, were able to live without financial worries.

During the three years before Hitler came to
power, total earnings had fallen by more than half, from 23 billion marks to 11
billion. The average per capita income had dropped from 1,187 marks in 1929 to
627 marks, a scarcely tolerable level, in 1932. By January 1933, when Hitler
took office, 90 percent of the German people were destitute.

No one escaped the strangling effects of the
unemployment. The intellectuals were hit as hard as the working class. Of the
135,000 university graduates, 60 percent were without jobs. Only a tiny minority
was receiving unemployment benefits.

"The others," wrote one foreign observer,
Marcel Laloire (in his book New Germany), "are dependent on their parents or are
sleeping in flophouses. In the daytime they can be seen on the boulevards of
Berlin wearing signs on their backs to the effect that they will accept any kind
of work."

But there was no longer any kind of work.

The same drastic fall-off had hit Germany's
cottage industry, which comprised some four million workers. Its turnover had
declined 55 percent, with total sales plunging from 22 billion to 10 billion
marks.

Hardest hit of all were construction workers;
90 percent of them were unemployed.

Farmers, too, had been ruined, crushed by
losses amounting to 12 billion marks. Many had been forced to mortgage their
homes and their land. In 1932 just the interest on the loans they had incurred
due to the crash was equivalent to 20 percent of the value of the agricultural
production of the entire country. Those who were no longer able to meet the
interest payments saw their farms auctioned off in legal proceedings: in the
years 1931-1932, 17,157 farms - with a combined total area of 462,485 hectares -
were liquidated in this way.

The "democracy" of Germany's "Weimar Republic"
(1918 -1933) had proven utterly ineffective in addressing such flagrant wrongs
as this impoverishment of millions of farm workers, even though they were the
nation's most stable and hardest working citizens. Plundered, dispossessed,
abandoned: small wonder they heeded Hitler's call.

Their situation on January 30, 1933, was
tragic. Like the rest of Germany's working class, they had been betrayed by
their political leaders, reduced to the alternatives of miserable wages, paltry
and uncertain benefit payments, or the outright humiliation of begging.

Germany's industries, once renowned everywhere
in the world, were no longer prosperous, despite the millions of marks in
gratuities that the financial magnates felt obliged to pour into the coffers of
the parties in power before each election in order to secure their cooperation.
For 14 years the well-blinkered conservatives and Christian democrats of the
political center had been feeding at the trough just as greedily as their
adversaries of the left.

Thus, prior to 1933, the Social Democrats had
been generously bribed by Friedrich Flick, a super-capitalist businessman. With
him, as with all his like, it was a matter of carefully studied tactics. After
1945, his son, true to tradition, would continue to offer largess to the
Bundestag Socialists who had their hands out, and, in a roundabout way, to
similarly minded and equally greedy political parties abroad as well. The
benefactors, to be sure, made certain that their gifts bore fruit in lucrative
contracts and in cancelled fiscal obligations.

Nothing is given for nothing. In politics,
manacles are imposed in the form of money.

Even though they had thus assured themselves
of the willing cooperation of the politicians of the Weimar system's parties,
the titans of German capitalism had experienced only a succession of
catastrophes. The patchwork governments they backed, formed in the political
scramble by claim and compromise, were totally ineffective. They lurched from
one failure to another, with neither time for long-range planning nor the will
to confine themselves somehow to their proper function.

Time is required for the accomplishment of
anything important. It is only with time that great plans may be brought to
maturity and the competent men be found who are capable of carrying them out.
Not surprisingly, therefore, any economic plans drawn up amid all this shifting
for short-term political advantage were bound to fail.

Nor did the bribing of the political parties
make them any more capable of coping with the exactions ordered by the Treaty of
Versailles. France, in 1923, had effectively seized Germany by the throat with
her occupation of the Ruhr industrial region, and in six months had brought the
Weimar government to pitiable capitulation. But then, disunited, despising one
another, how could these political birds of passage have offered resistance? In
just a few months in 1923, seven German governments came and went in swift
succession. They had no choice but to submit to the humiliation of Allied
control, as well as to the separatist intrigues fomented by Poincarй's paid
agents.

The substantial tariffs imposed on the sale of
German goods abroad had sharply curtailed the nation's ability to export her
products. Under obligation to pay gigantic sums to their conquerors, the Germans
had paid out billions upon billions. Then, bled dry, they were forced to seek
recourse to enormous loans from abroad, from the United States in particular.

This indebtedness had completed their
destruction and, in 1929, precipitated Germany into a terrifying financial
crisis.

The big industrialists, for all their fat
bribes to the politicians, now found themselves impotent: their factories empty,
their workers now living as virtual vagrants, haggard of face, in the dismal
nearby working-class districts.

Thousands of German factories lay silent,
their smokestacks like a forest of dead trees. Many had gone under. Those which
survived were operating on a limited basis. Germany's gross industrial
production had fallen by half: from seven billion marks in 1920 to three and a
half billion in 1932.

The automobile industry provides a perfect
example. Germany's production in 1932 was proportionately only one twelfth that
of the United States, and only one fourth that of France: 682,376 cars in
Germany (one for each 100 inhabitants) as against 1,855,174 cars in France, even
though the latter's population was 20 million less than Germany's.

Germany had experienced a similar collapse in
exports. Her trade surplus had fallen from 2.872 billion marks in 1931 to only
667 millions in 1932 - nearly a 75 percent drop.

Overwhelmed by the cessation of payments and
the number of current accounts in the red, even Germany's central bank was
disintegrating. Harried by demands for repayment of the foreign loans, on the
day of Hitler's accession to power the Reichsbank had in all only 83 million
marks in foreign currency, 64 million of which had already been committed for
disbursement on the following day.

The astronomical foreign debt, an amount
exceeding that of the country's total exports for three years, was like a lead
weight on the back of every German. And there was no possibility of turning to
Germany's domestic financial resources for a solution: banking activities had
come virtually to a standstill. That left only taxes.

Unfortunately, tax revenues had also fallen
sharply. From nine billion marks in 1930, total revenue from taxes had fallen to
7.8 billion in 1931, and then to 6.65 billion in 1932 (with unemployment
payments alone taking four billion of that amount).

The financial debt burden of regional and
local authorities, amounting to billions, had likewise accumulated at a fearful
pace. Beset as they were by millions of citizens in need, the municipalities
alone owed 6.542 billion in 1928, an amount that had increased to 11.295 billion
by 1932. Of this total, 1.668 billion was owed in short-term loans.

Any hope of paying off these deficits with new
taxes was no longer even imaginable. Taxes had already been increased 45 percent
from 1925 to 1931. During the years 1931-1932, under Chancellor Brьning, a
Germany of unemployed workers and industrialists with half-dead factories had
been hit with 23 "emergency" decrees. This multiple overtaxing, moreover, had
proven to be completely useless, as the "International Bank of Payments" had
clearly foreseen. The agency confirmed in a statement that the tax burden in
Germany was already so enormous that it could not be further increased.

And so, in one pan of the financial scales: 19
billion in foreign debt plus the same amount in domestic debt. In the other, the
Reichsbank's 83 million marks in foreign currency. It was as if the average
German, owing his banker a debt of 6,000 marks, had less than 14 marks in his
pocket to pay it.

One inevitable consequence of this
ever-increasing misery and uncertainty about the future was an abrupt decline in
the birthrate. When your household savings are wiped out, and when you fear even
greater calamities in the days ahead, you do not risk adding to the number of
your dependents.

In those days the birth rate was a reliable
barometer of a country's prosperity. A child is a joy, unless you have nothing
but a crust of bread to put in its little hand. And that's just the way it was
with hundreds of thousands of German families in 1932.

In 1905, during the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm
II, the birthrate had been 33.4 per one thousand. In 1921 it was only 25.9, and
in 1924 it was down to 15.1. By the of 1932, it had fallen to just 14.7 per one
thousand.

It reached that figure, moreover, thanks only
to the higher birth rate in rural areas. In the fifty largest cities of the
Reich, there were more deaths than births. In 45 percent of working-class
families, there were no births at all in the latter years. The fall in the
birthrate was most pronounced in Berlin, which had less than one child per
family and only 9.1 births per one thousand. Deaths exceeded the number of new
births by 60 percent.

In contrast to the birthrate, politicians were
flourishing as never before - about the only thing in Germany that was in those
disastrous times. From 1919 to 1932, Germany had seen no less than 23
governments come and go, averaging a new one about every seven months. As any
sensible person realizes, such constant upheaval in a country's political
leadership negates its power and authority. No one would imagine that any
effective work could be carried out in a typical industrial enterprise if the
board of directors, the management, management methods, and key personnel were
all replaced every eight months. Failure would be certain.

Yet the Reich wasn't a factory of 100 or 200
workers, but a nation of 65 million citizens crushed under the imposed burdens
of the Treaty of Versailles, by industrial stagnation, by frightful
unemployment, and by a gut-wrenching misery shared by the entire people.

The many cabinet ministers who followed each
other in swift succession for thirteen years - due to petty parliamentary
squabbles, partisan demands, and personal ambitions - were unable to achieve
anything other than the certain collapse of their chaotic regime of rival
parties.

Germany's situation was further aggravated by
the unrestrained competition of the 25 regional states, which split up
governmental authority into units often in direct opposition to Berlin, thereby
incessantly sabotaging what limited power the central Reich government had at
that time.

The regional remnants of several centuries of
particularism were all fiercely jealous of their privileges. The Treaty of
Westphalia of 1648 had divided Germany into hundreds of Lilliputian states, most
of them musical comedy kingdoms whose petty monarchs tried to act like King
Louis XIV in courts complete with frills and reverential bows.

Even at the beginning of the First World War
(1914-1918), the German Reich included four distinct kingdoms (Prussia, Bavaria,
Wurttemberg and Saxony), each with its own sovereign, army, flag, titles of
nobility, and Great Cross in particolored enamel. In addition, there were six
grand duchies, five duchies, seven principalities, and three free cities.

The Bavarian clung fiercely to his lederhosen,
his steins of beer and his pipe. He took part in the war to preserve them. The
Saxon would gladly have had a go-around with the haughty Prussian. Each was
intent on his rights. And for all of them, faraway Berlin was a thorn in the
side.

Each regional state had its own separate
government with parliament, prime minister and cabinet. Altogether they
presented a lineup of 59 ministers who, added to the eleven Reich ministers and
the 42 senators of the Free Cities, gave the Germans a collection of 112
ministers, each of whom viewed the other with a jaundiced eye at best.

In addition, there were between two and three
thousand deputies - representing dozens of rival political parties - in the
legislatures of the Reich, the 22 states and the three Free Cities.

In the Reichstag elections of November 1932 -
held just months before Hitler become Chancellor - there were no less than 37
different political parties competing, with a total of 7,000 candidates (14 of
them by proxy), all of them frantically seeking a piece of the parliamentary
pie. It was most strange: the more discredited the party system became, the more
democratic champions there were to be seen gesturing and jostling in their
eagerness to climb aboard the gravy train.

To all appearances, the incumbents who had
been elected were there forever. They received fat salaries (a Reichstag deputy
got ten times what the average worker earned), and permitted themselves generous
supplementary incomes in the form of favors provided by interested clients. A
number of Socialist Reichstag deputies representing Berlin, for example, had
arranged for their wives to receive sumptuous fur coats from certain Jewish
financiers.

In a parliamentary democracy, mandates are
often very brief, and ministerial appointments even more so. The temptation is
strong to get it while you can.

Honest, dishonest, or piratical, these 112
cabinet ministers and thousands of legislative deputies had converted Germany
into a country that was ungovernable. It is incontestable that, by January of
1933, the "system" politicians had become completely discredited. Their
successors would inherit a country in economic, social and political ruins.

Today, more than half a century later, in an
era when so many are living in abundance, it is hard to believe that the Germany
of January 1933 had fallen so low. But for anyone who studies the archives and
the relevant documents of that time, there can be no doubt. Not a single figure
cited here is invented. By January 1933, Germany was down and bleeding to death.

All the previous chancellors who had
undertaken to get Germany back on her feet - including Brьning, Papen and
Schleicher - had failed. Only a genius or, as some believed, a madman, could
revive a nation that had fallen into such a state of complete disarray.

When President Franklin Roosevelt was called
upon at that same time to resolve a similar crisis in the United States, he had
at his disposal immense reserves of gold. Hitler, standing silently at the
chancellery window on that evening of January 30, 1933, knew that, on the
contrary, his nation's treasury was empty. No great benefactor would appear to
help him out. The elderly Reich President, Paul von Hindenburg, had given him a
work sheet of appalling figures of indebtedness.

Hitler knew that he would be starting from
zero. From less than zero. But he was also confident of his strength of will to
create Germany anew - politically, socially, financially, and economically. Now
legally and officially in power, he was sure that he could quickly convert that
cipher into a Germany more powerful than ever before.

What support did he have?

For one thing, he could count on the absolute
support of millions of fanatical disciples. And on that January evening, they
joyfully shared in the great thrill of victory. Some thirteen million Germans,
many of them former Socialists and Communists, had voted for his party.

But millions of Germans were still his
adversaries, disconcerted adversaries, to be sure, whom their own political
parties had betrayed, but who had still not been won over to National Socialism.

The two sides - those for and those against
Hitler - were very nearly equal in numbers. But whereas those on the left were
divided among themselves, Hitler's disciples were strongly united. And in one
thing above all, the National Socialists had an incomparable advantage: in their
convictions and in their total faith in a leader. Their highly organized and
well-disciplined party had conted with the worst kind of obstacles, and had
overcome them.

Hitler poses with close comrades shortly after
being named Chancellor on January 30, 1933.

While it enjoyed extraordinarily popular
support, the National Socialist movement had grown too fast, and problems
deriving from that lay in wait ahead. Thousands of visionaries with nebulous
dreams of domination, not to mention hotheads dreaming only of brawls and
revolution in perpetuity, had found their way into the National Socialist ranks.
The ambitious ones intended to rise to the top at any cost - and as quickly as
possible. Many of them were ill-prepared; some simply lacked morals. Many bitter
disappointments were in store for Hitler because of them.

Hitler sensed as much. He had ordered his
party to halt recruitment of new members, and even directed that the SA - the
huge civilian paramilitary force that had carried him to power - be reduced in
size. Indeed, by 1933 SA stormtroop membership had grown to the incredible
figure of 2,500,000 men, 25 times the size of the regular army, the Reichswehr.

It was due to such pressures that Hitler was
sometimes driven to rash action, contrary to his real desire or intent.
Sometimes this meant expulsions, the use of force or cases of intransigence,
even though his larger goal was to reunite the nation in peace, and accomplish
his political and social programs without useless clashes.

Hitler knew that he was playing with dynamite.
Still, it was his conviction that he was being driven not just by his National
Socialist movement, but by an inner, almost supernatural force. Whether one
called it Providence or Destiny, it was this force, he felt, that had carried
him to victory. His own force of character was such that it would yield to
nothing. For Hitler, it was a foregone conclusion that he would forge a new
Reich, a new world.

Hitler knew that the task he had set himself
would be immense and difficult to accomplish, that he would have to transform
Germany in practically every respect: the structure of the state, social law,
the constitution of society, the economy, civic spirit, culture, the very nature
of men's thinking. To accomplish his great goal, he would need to reestablish
the equilibrium of the social classes within the context of a regenerated
community, free his nation from foreign hegemony, and restructure its geographic
unity.

Task number one: he would have to restore work
and honor to the lives of six million unemployed. This was his immediate goal, a
task that everyone else thought impossible to achieve.

After he had once again closed the windows of
the chancellery, Hitler, with clenched fists and resolute mien, said simply:
"The great venture begins. The day of the Third Reich has come."

In just one year this "great venture" would be
in full swing, effecting a transformation from top to bottom in political,
social and economic life - indeed, in the German way of life itself.

II. The Unification of the State

"It will be the pride of my life," Hitler said
upon becoming Chancellor, "if I can say at the end of my days that I won back
the German worker and restored him to his rightful place in the Reich." He meant
that he intended not merely to put men back to work, but to make sure that the
worker acquired not just rights, but prestige as well, within the national
community.

The national community had long been the
proverbial wicked stepmother in its relationship with the German working man.
Class struggle had not been the exclusive initiative of the Marxists. It had
also been a fact of life for a privileged class, the capitalists, that sought to
dominate the working class. Thus the German worker, feeling himself treated like
a pariah, had often turned away from a fatherland that often seemed to consider
him merely an instrument of production.

In the eyes of the capitalists, money was the
sole active element in the flourishing of a country's economy. To Hitler's way
of thinking, that conception was radically wrong: capital, on the contrary, was
only an instrument. Work was the essential element: man's endeavor, man's honor,
blood, muscles and soul.

Hitler wanted not just to put an to the class
struggle, but to reestablish the priority of the human being, in justice and
respect, as the principal factor in production.

One could dispense with gold, and Hitler would
do just that. A dozen other things could be substituted for gold as a means of
stimulating industry, and Hitler would invent them. But as for work, it was the
indispensable foundation.

For the worker's trust in the fatherland to be
restored, he had to feel that from now on he was to be (and to be treated) as an
equal, instead of remaining a social inferior. Under the governments of the
so-called democratic parties of both the left and the right, he had remained an
inferior; for none of them had understood that in the hierarchy of national
values, work is the very essence of life; and matter, be it steel or gold, but a
tool.

The objective, then, was far greater than
merely sing six million unemployed back to work. It was to achieve a total
revolution.

"The people," Hitler declared, "were not put
here on earth for the sake of the economy, and the economy doesn't exist for the
sake of capital. On the contrary, capital is meant to serve the economy, and the
economy in turn to serve the people."

It would not be enough merely to reopen the
thousands of closed factories and fill them with workers. If the old concepts
still ruled, the workers would once again be nothing more than living machines,
faceless and interchangeable.

What was required was to reestablish that
moral equilibrium between the workers, human beings who shape raw materials, and
a useful and controlled capitalism, returned to its proper function as a tool.
This would mean changing an entire world, and it would take time.

As Hitler knew full well, such a revolution
could not be achieved while the central and regional governments continued in a
state of anarchy, seldom accomplishing anything solid, and sometimes running
amok. Nor could there be a revolution in society while dozens of parties and
thousands of deputies of every conceivable stripe pursued their selfish
interests under a political system that had thrashed about incoherently since
1919.

Restoring the effectiveness of Germany's
institutions on a nationwide basis was therefore an indispensable prerequisite
to any social rebirth.

"A fish rots from the head down," says a
Russian proverb. And it was at the head that political Germany, prior to Hitler,
was going bad. In the end, the "democratic" parties abdicated without even
defending themselves. In 1930, the aged President Marshall von Hindenburg used
his emergency powers under Article 48 of the Weimar constitution to enable a
succession of semi-dictators to rule by decree. But even they could accomplish
little.

These last chancellors - Herr Brьning, Herr
von Papen, and General Schleicher - were able to maintain rule only by executive
decree. Their authority, artificially sustained by misuse of Article 48, was
dependent on von Hindenburg and the camarilla advising him. Just how slim was
their level of popular support was shown in a particularly humiliating 1932
Reichstag "vote of confidence," in which more than 90 percent of the deputies
voted against him and his government.

Hitler's accession to power abruptly brought
an end to government impotence. As a condition of appointing him, however,
Hindenburg had demanded that the new chancellor be hemmed in like a prisoner in
his own government. In his first government, Hitler was obliged to name four
times as many conservative - or better, reactionary - ministers as his own men.
Just two members of his first cabinet were National Socialists.

Hindenburg's representatives were given the
mission of keeping Hitler on a leash. At the Reichstag session of March 24,
however, Hitler broke that leash, not with yet another executive decree (like
his immediate predecessors), but by obtaining a two-thirds parliamentary
majority for the "Enabling Act" that legally amed the constitution and gave him
sweeping plenary powers for a period of four years.

Four years in power to plan, create and make
decisions. Politically, it was a revolution: Hitler's first revolution. And
completely democratic, as had been every stage of his rise. His initial triumph
had come through the support of the electorate. Similarly, sweeping authority to
govern was granted him through a vote of more than two-thirds of the Reichtag's
deputies, elected by universal suffrage.

This was in accord with a basic principle of
Hitler's: no power without the freely given approval of the people. He used to
say: "If you can win mastery over the people only by imposing the power of the
state, you'd better figure on a nine o'clock curfew."

Nowhere in twentieth-century Europe had the
authority of a head of state ever been based on such overwhelming and freely
given national consent. Prior to Hitler, from 1919 to 1932, those governments
piously styling themselves democratic had usually come to power by meager
majorities, sometimes as low as 51 or 52 percent.

"I am not a dictator," Hitler had often
affirmed, "and I never will be. Democracy will be rigorously enforced by
National Socialism."

Authority does not mean tyranny. A tyrant is
someone who puts himself in power without the will of the people or against the
will of the people. A democrat is placed in power by the people. But democracy
is not limited to a single formula. It may be partisan or parliamentary. Or it
may be authoritarian. The important thing is that the people have wished it,
chosen it, established it in its given form.

That was the case with Hitler. He came to
power in an essentially democratic way. Whether one likes it or not, this fact
is undeniable. And after coming to power, his popular support measurably
increased from year to year. The more intelligent and honest of his enemies have
been obliged to admit this, men such as the declared anti-Nazi historian and
professor Joachim Fest, who wrote:

For Hitler was never interested in
establishing a mere tyranny. Sheer greed for power will not suffice as
explanation for his personality and energy - He was not born to be a mere
tyrant. He was fixated upon his mission of defending Europe and the Aryan race .
. . Never had he felt so dependent upon the masses as he did at this time, and
he watched their reactions with anxious concern.

These lines weren't written by Dr. Goebbels,
but by a stern critic of Hitler and his career. (J. Fest, Hitler, New York:
1974, p. 417.)

By February 28, 1933, less than a month after
his appointment as chancellor, Hitler had already managed to free himself of the
conservative ballast by which Hindenburg had thought to weigh him down. The
Reichstag fire of the previous evening prompted the elderly President to approve
a new emergency law "For the Protection of the People and the State," which
considerably increased the powers of the executive.

Hitler meant, however, to obtain more than
just concessions ruefully granted by a pliable old man: he sought plenary powers
legally accorded him by the nation's supreme democratic institution, the
Reichstag. Hitler prepared his coup with the skill, the patience, and the
astuteness for which he is legendary. "He possessed," historian Fest later
wrote, "an intelligence that included above all a sure sense of the rhythm to be
observed in the making of decisions."

Hitler, von Hinderburg, and von Papen, in the
Garrison church at the solemn "Day of Potsdam" ceremony.

At first, Hitler carefully cultivated
Hindenburg, the elderly First World War Feldmarschall who was fond of tradition.
Accordingly, Hitler arranged a solemn ceremony in Hindenburg's honor in Potsdam,
historic residence of the Prussian kings. This masterpiece of majesty, beauty,
tradition and piety took place in Potsdam's Garrison Church on March 21, 1933,
just days before the Reichstag was to reconvene.

Hindenburg had served as an army officer for
half a century. So that the old soldier might be reunited with his comrades,
Hitler had arranged for veterans from all the wars in which Hindenburg had
served to be present on this solemn occasion. From all around the country they
came: veterans from the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 (62 years before), from
the war of 1866 against the Austrian empire (67 years before), and even from the
war of 1864 against Denmark (69 years before!). For someone on the retirement
list of 1911, it must have been a heartwarming occasion to be reunited again
with comrades from so long ago.

With deference and apparent humility, and
attired in formal dress for the occasion, Hitler bowed his head before the old
man. In the stately church where the ceremony took place, Hitler had arranged
that the chair of the former Kaiser, Wilhelm II, which had been unoccupied for
14 years, remained empty, so that Hindenburg could halt before it and make his
salute, his marshal's baton raised, as if the monarch were still there.

Hitler also quietly led Hindenburg down into
the church crypt, to place wreaths on the tombs of his old master, Kaiser
Wilhelm I, and of Frederick the Great. The President's old eyes were rimmed with
tears.

On that 21st day of March at Potsdam, the
octogenarian President relived the glorious past of the German monarchy. This
somber homage was his hour supreme. Hindenburg had always been a loyal servant
of the Emperor, and this reminder of his former sovereign, and of the great days
of his own long career, deeply moved him. Hitler was the first chancellor since
the defeat of 1918 to so honor the tradition of Prussia and Germany. The young
revolutionary chancellor had touched his heart.

A month and a half earlier, Hindenburg had
commissioned Papen, Hugenberg, and Neurath and other conservative ministers to
pinch in Hitler "until he hollered." Now that was over. Hitler had won him over:
in front of an empty armchair and before the tombs of Prussia's greatest kings.

A year and a half later, as he lay dying, the
old Feldmarschall would believe that he was back in the time of Hohenzollern
dynasty, and in his delirium would address Hitler as "Majesty."

This "Day of Potsdam" ceremony also won Hitler
new support from among the country's many monarchists, giving them the
impression that he has not altogether insensitive to the idea of restoring the
monarchy. But the new chancellor's temporary prudence was calculated with
precision.

"There is no need to destroy the existing
institutions," Hitler assured, "until there is something better to put in their
place."

He still had need of men like von Papen and
other ruling-class troglodytes. He kept them at his side as he drove them around
Potsdam on that historic day, the festive city bedecked not only with swastika
banners but equally with the black-white-and-red flags of the Second Reich,
resurrected for the occasion. Brass bands paraded around, blaring heroic marches
calculated to make their old chests swell. Here too, the scarcely camouflaged
aversion to the parvenu was softened. Hitler had tamed the aristocrats, both
born and moneyed. They would no longer stand in his way.

But it was above all Germany's army - the
Reichswehr - that was the object of Hitler's most ardent courtship. In 1933, he
desperately needed the army's support. The generals had tolerated his rise to
power with reluctance. A corporal in the chancellory seemed intolerable to the
haughty, monocled generals. Some ambitiously sought to supervise the nation's
political machinery.

They had not been consulted when Hitler was
named Chancellor on January 30. The old Feldmarschall had even sternly sent away
General von Hammerstein-Equord, who had come to tell Hindenburg of the General
Staff's vote of disapproval. In the weeks since, the generals had barely
tolerated the young outsider.

Keenly aware that a coup d'йtat by this proud
military caste could instantly sweep him and his party away, along with all his
plans for the future, Hitler knew that he must proceed cleverly against the
imperious generals. The Reichswehr was therefore accorded a position of honor at
Potsdam. At the entry walkway to the royal palace, Reichswehr troops presented
arms on one side, while a line of SA stormtroopers faced them on the other side.
Unifying conservative military traditions of duty and honor with a revolutionary
new force, together they formed the honor guard that symbolized a Germany
restored to harmony.

The young Chancellor greets the aging
President at the "Day of Potsdam" ceremony, March 21, 1933.

As for the generals, their tunics gleaming
with decorations and their chests thrown out, they once again marched behind
their old commander, a heroic retinue worthy of a great Germanic chieftain. At
last, after fourteen years of disregard under the democratic Weimar Republic,
they once again bathed in the golden light of martial glory. Corporal Hitler was
perhaps not as contemptible as they had thought.

The ex-corporal, standing at attention in top
hat and formal dress suit, let them have their day of glory at Potsdam. He knew
enough to let them bask in the limelight.

Hitler had won his armistice.

To reach the people, Hitler and Dr. Goebbels
had quickly taken control of the nation's radio, from which they had for so long
been barred (and which their adversaries had put to only mediocre use). Within a
few weeks, they had succeeded in making radio their most effective tool. Each of
Hitler's major speeches was broadcast to the nation with a hitherto unknown
power.

Radio also brought the spectacle of Potsdam to
the people. Goebbels set up his microphones everywhere: in front of Hindenburg,
behind Hindenburg, in the royal crypt, close to the military bands, and even on
the rooftops of houses (where the announcers risked their necks to cover the
pageantry). One of them was a young National Socialist Reichstag deputy named
Baldur von Schirach, who in 1946 would find himself in the dock before the
vengeful Allied judges of the Nuremberg Tribunal.

All of Germany was on the edge of its seat as
it listened for hours to the exciting coverage of the event. Millions of Germans
thrilled to once again hear the stirring old melodies, and to closely follow
Hindenburg's every move, almost as if they were there.

During the dark days of the recent past, the
venerated old warrior had represented tradition and hope. Now, thanks to
Hitler's careful planning and management of this occasion, the ancient soldier
embodied the promise of great national renewal. It was, as historian Fest has
observed, "the feast of reconciliation gorgeously presented . . . That day at
Potsdam truly proved to be a turning point in history . . . Many government
officials, army officers, lawyers and judges, many members of the nationalistic
bourgeoisie who had distrusted Hitler on rational grounds, abandoned their stand
. . . " (J. Fest, Hitler, New York: 1974, p. 405.)

Potsdam was a grandiose theatrical stage on
which all had played their parts, even - by their very absence - the lukewarm
and Hitler's enemies on the left.

Glued to their radio sets, all Germany had
participated in the spectacle, at first fascinated, and then caught up in the
emotion of the event. The next day, Berlin newspapers declared: "National
enthusiasm swept over Germany yesterday like a great storm."

"A strange mixture of tactician and
visionary," Joachim Fest would later write, sizing up this extraordinary stage
manager. For Hitler had led field marshals, generals, and other dignitaries,
none of them fools, through his drill paces as though they had been so many
animated tin soldiers. But Hitler's plans exted far beyond winning over the Old
Guard.

In order to establish his new state in
definitive form, Hitler now proposed to obtain the official ratification of the
Reichstag, which would establish his authority to govern as a virtual dictator
for a period of several years.

To gain such plenary powers lawfully, the
German constitution had to be amed, and this would require approval by two
thirds of the parliament's members.

Hitler's party, having won 17,300,000 votes in
the elections of March 5, 1933, for the new Reichstag, held a total of 288 seats
- making it by far the largest single party. His conservative ally in the
temporary partnership, Hugenberg's German National People's Party (DNVP), had
captured 4,750,000 votes and held another 52 seats, giving the coalition a total
of 340 deputies.

After deducting the 81 "empty" Communist
seats, the opposition now mustered just 226 members: 120 Social Democrats, 92
(Catholic) Center and BVP deputies, and 14 others.

Although his coalition held a majority of
seats, to alter the constitution Hitler needed a two thirds majority - which
meant 36 additional votes.

At first sight, this goal seemed almost
impossible. For more than a decade, the Catholic Center and Bavarian People's
parties had been outspoken critics of Hitler and his National Socialist
movement, unhesitatingly using religion as a partisan political weapon, and even
denying religious burial to Catholic National Socialists murdered by Communist
killers.

Hitler, with the assistance of Gцring (who was
now president of the new Reichstag), would now have to win over that clerical
flock. Center party leader Monsignor Kaas, a squat and pudgy prelate who found
the collecting of votes to be more satisfying than the guidance of souls, was
flattered and courted by Hitler, who dangled before him the promise of a
rapprochement between the state and the Catholic Church, an earnest promise that
Hitler would make good on the following summer. The beguiled prelate may have
believed that he was going to lead errant sheep back to the fold. In any case,
Hitler succeeded in persuading and seducing the Center party. Some deputies of
the smaller opposition parties also yielded.

When it came time to vote, Hitler was granted
plenary powers with a sweeping majority of 441 votes to 94: he had won not just
two thirds, but 82.44 percent of the assembly's votes. This "Enabling Act"
granted Hitler for four years virtually absolute authority over the legislative
as well as the executive affairs of the government.

The five paragraphs of this "Law for the
Alleviation of the Misery of the People and the Nation" were brief and to the
point:

1. Laws may be promulgated by the Reich
government apart from the procedures provided for by the Constitution . . .

2. Laws promulgated by the Reich government
may deviate from the Constitution provided they do not change the position of
the Reichstag or of the Reichsrat. The powers of the Reich President are not
changed.

3. Laws promulgated by the Reich government
will be prepared by the Chancellor and published in the "Official Journal."
Unless otherwise specified, they become effective on the day following
publication . . .

4. Treaties concluded by the Reich with
foreign states that concern matters of national legislation do not require
ratification by the legislative bodies. The Reich government is empowered to
issue the regulations necessary for their execution.

5. This law becomes effective on the day of
publication, and remains valid until April 1, 1937. It also becomes invalid if
the present government is replaced by another.

Berlin, March 24, 1933

Von Hindenburg, Hitler, Frick, von Neurath,
Krosigk

Thus, a parliamentary democracy, exercising
its constitutional powers, had legally established an authoritarian national
state. Next, a solution was needed to problem of the horde of the competing
regional, state and local parliaments, jurisdictions and authorities. For the
most part, these authorities were virtual nullities, and there was no love lost
between them. For fourteen years, though, they had acted together whenever a
opportunity presented itself to thwart the central government in Berlin.

It was inconceivable that a strong government
such as the one Hitler had just established could function effectively with
thousands of second-level politicians carping and questioning his every move.
Anyway, Germans had in fact become sick and tired of the squandering of
authority, the perpetual squabbling, the pettiness, discord, and the anarchy for
which, in the final analysis, it was the people who paid.

"It is a fact," French historian
Bйnoist-Mйchin later observed, "that the unification of the states and the Reich
answered one of the most profound aspirations of the German people. They had
enough of being torn apart by the constant threats of secession of the
provincial governments. For centuries they had dreamed of being part of a single
community." (Histoire de l'Armйe Allemande, vol. III, p. 117.)

It seemed a simple enough task, because public
opinion demanded the abolition of the administrative mess. But such a reform
would necessarily bruise the vanity of thousands and collide head-on with many
local special interests.

A man who is a council president or a
minister, even if only of a small state, does not easily resign himself to being
no more than a private citizen, to once again becoming, let us say, a provincial
lawyer scampering to the court house with coattails flying. The 2,400
legislative deputies would also be bitter about losing the good life they had
come to know and expect. Gone the prestige, the deference, the awards, the
vacation trips at public expense, the discreet gratuities! Who among us does not
make a wry face when swallowing bitter medicine? But it had to be, for Hitler
had his eyes fixed on the national goal: a unified nation.

That did not mean, of course, that in
eliminating the regional administrations Hitler had any desire to do away with
the distinctive identities of the nation's various provinces. On the contrary,
he believed that a nation's life ought never to be monopolized by its capital
city, but should rather be nourished and constantly renewed by the blooming of
dozens of centers of culture in regions rich in varied manners, mores and
legacies of their past.

He believed that the nation was the harmonious
conjunction of these profound and original variations, and that a state
conscious of its real powers ought to promote such variety, not smother it.

The dispersion of political power had not
favored such a variety, but had, on the contrary, diminished it, depriving it of
the cohesion a large community brings. The Reich's 25 separate administrative
entities, rivals of the central government and often of each other, were a
source of disorder. A nation must consist of regions that know and esteem each
other, and which gain mutual enrichment from their interlinking, rather than
each withdrawing into a culture that is strangled by an exclusive and
restrictive provincialism. And only a strong central authority could insure the
flowering of all the various regions within a single collective entity. In sum,
what Hitler intended was that each region should bring its share of original
culture to the totality of a German Reich that had put an to so many fractious
administrations.

From 1871 to 1933, Germany's various national
governments had come up against this obstacle of political particularism. Even
so gifted a leader as Bismarck had not been able to overcome this persistent
problem. And now, where the leaders of both the Second Reich and the Weimar
Republic had failed, or had not dared to take the risk, Hitler, in a few months,
was going to convert this long-standing division and discord into potent and
effective unity.

Hitler had scarcely moved into his office
overlooking the chancellery garden, where squirrels cracked nuts in the trees
and at times even leaped into the building itself, when he drew up a law to
unify the Reich's many lands.

The first of the states that would be made to
toe the line was Bavaria, which up to that point had been a bulwark of
belligerent separatism and hidebound monarchists.

Hitler's intentions were no sooner known than
several Bavarian ministers devised a plan to resurrect from retirement that old
fogy, the ex-Prince Ruprecht, heir to Bavaria's Wittelsbach throne, who in
November 1923, then as an ordinary private citizen, had, with a good deal of
boasting, helped block Hitler's ill-fated putsch. Now the new chancellor
responded to their little plot with sudden and crushing force, bringing the
Bavarian state administration to heel in a single night. The next morning,
Lieutenant General von Epp was named Reich Commissioner in Munich.

Thereafter, almost all the other regional
states rapidly collapsed, like a house of cards.

The most difficult state to master was
Prussia, an enormous bastion (a third of Germany) stretching across the heart of
the country. Prussia truly constituted a state within the state, a special
government. In 1931 its Socialist government had held Reich Chancellor Brьning
completely in check. His humiliating defeat came notwithstanding their party's
crushing defeat in the Prussian elections a short time earlier at the hands of
Hitler's candidates. Chancellor von Papen found that he, too, had to come to
grips with Prussia, which was nearly as strong as the central government.

After he became Chancellor, Hitler was obliged
for a time - because Hindenburg demanded it - to let von Papen remain as Reich
Commissioner of Prussia; and it was only with great effort on his part that
Hitler managed to have Gцring named as von Papen's Minister of the Interior in
Prussia. The autonomy of the Prussian government, more than any other, had to be
liquidated: otherwise, the central government would remain subject at any moment
to embarrassment and hindrance in the city that was the capital of both Prussia
and the Reich. The matter was particularly delicate because von Papen, the
aristocrat, had to remain as Reich Commissioner of Prussia. To remove him would
risk disapproval and even countermeasures by President von Hindenburg.

Hitler at that point surpassed himself in
versatility and guile. By dint of flattery and persuasion, within a month von
Papen let himself be gently shoved out the door. Hitler all but dictated for him
the text of his letter of resignation of April 7, 1933, in which the Vice
Chancellor acknowledged that the Law on the Unification of the Lands of the
Reich "was a legal edifice destined to be of great historic importance in the
development of the German Reich." He further recognized that "the dualism
existing between the Reich and Prussia" had to come to an. In his letter he even
compared Hitler to Prince Otto von Bismarck.

Although von Papen was being nudged out,
Hitler soothed his wounded pride by publicly declaring that he never would have
been able to carry out the political reunification of the Reich alone; that the
great architect of the achievement had been von Papen.

Without turning a hair, Hitler also wrote to
Feldmarschall von Hindenburg:

In assuming the functions of Reich
Commissioner in Prussia during the difficult period following the 30th of
January, Herr von Papen has deserved very great credit for contributing so
strongly to the working out of a strict coordination between the policies of the
Reich and those of the regional states. His collaboration with the cabinet of
the Reich, to which he will henceforth be able to devote himself completely,
will be of priceless assistance to me. The feelings I have for him are such that
I rejoice in having the benefit of his cooperation, which will be of inestimable
value to me.

For his part the aged field marshal responded
to this small masterpiece of hypocrisy with one of his own, this one addressed
to von Papen:

Dear Herr von Papen,

I have just accepted your request that you be
relieved of your duties as Reich commissioner of Prussia. I take this
opportunity to thank you, in the name of the Reich and in my own name, for the
eminent service you have rendered the nation by eliminating the dualism existing
between the Reich and Prussia, and by imposing the idea of a common political
direction of the Reich and the regional states. I have learned with satisfaction
that you will henceforth be able to devote all your energies to the government
of the Reich.

With feelings of sincere comradeship, I remain
your devoted

von Hindenburg, President of the Reich
Ex-Chancellor von Papen thus lost the only effective power he still held.
Although he remained a member of the inner circle of Hitler's government (but
for how long?), he was now really little more than a willing stooge.

Hitler immediately named himself Statthalter
of Prussia, and Gцring as Minister President, thus bringing the greatest German
state under firm control.

One after another, the regional states were
shorn of their sovereignty. The process was staged like a ballet.

Act One: Regional parliamentary power is
transferred smoothly to men who had Hitler's confidence.

Act Two: Each man announces acceptance of the
"Law of Unification."

Act Three: Each regional parliament proclaims
the of its own state autonomy and sovereignty.

Act Four: In each region, Hitler appoints
Reich Commissioner (or Statthalter), who is charged with carrying out the
Chancellor's political directives.

In the Grand Duchies of Baden and Saxony there
were a few verbal skirmishes, but these were quickly squelched. In the Free City
of Hamburg (population a million and a half), its leaders grumbled a bit for
form's sake, but only a few hours of negotiations were required to make them see
the light. In just a few weeks, the entire process was accomplished.

Making use of the sweeping powers granted him
by the Reichstag's overwhelming vote of approval on March 23, 1933, within a few
months Hitler succeeded in transforming the faltering Reich government into a
formidable instrument of action. Thanks to that mandate, and several special
decrees signed by the President, he was thus able constitutionally to eliminate
the rival authorities of numerous state governments and parliaments.

"It all went much faster than we had dared
hope," Goebbels commented with delight, and a shade of sarcasm.

Precisely one year after Hitler had become
Chancellor, a "Law for the Rebuilding of the Reich" spelled out the full extent
of the change:

1. Representation of the regional states is
abolished.

2. (a) The sovereign rights of the regional
states are transferred to the government of the Reich.

(b) The governments of the regional states are
subject to the government of the Reich.

3. The governors [Statthalter] are subject to
the authority of the Reich Minister of the Interior.

4. The government of the Reich may modify the
constitutional rights of the regional states.

5. The Minister of the Interior will issue the
legal and administrative decrees necessary for the implementation of this law.

6. This law will become effective on the day
of its official publication.

Berlin, January 30, 1934

Von Hindenburg, Hitler, Frick

Bismarck, the "Iron Chancellor," could never
have dreamed of political reunification on such an authoritarian and
hierarchical basis. But Hitler had tried, and succeeded. Germany had now
attained a level of concentrated power and authority more profound than any ever
achieved in her history. And it had all been accomplished, moreover, by
democratic means.

After 1945 the explanation that was routinely
offered for all this was that the Germans had lost their heads. Whatever the
case, it is a historical fact that they acted of their own free will. Far from
being resigned, they were enthusiastic. "For the first time since the last days
of the monarchy," historian Joachim Fest has conceded, "the majority of the
Germans now had the feeling that they could identify with the state."

But what of the political parties?

Although Hitler had succeeded in transforming
the tens of millions of Bavarians, Saxons, Prussians and residents of Hamburg
into citizens of one and the same Reich, under a single national administration,
and even though the anthill of petty and more or less separatist states had been
leveled, there still remained in Germany the contentious and divisive political
parties. They had been discredited, to be sure, but the hearty ambitions of
impenitent politicians could reawaken to erode the foundations of the new state.

The party leaders were scarcely in a position
to protest. On the preceding 23rd of March they themselves had overwhelmingly
approved the fateful "Enabling Act." Now, with their wings clipped and their
prerogatives taken away, they no longer served any useful purpose. They were not
merely superfluous, they had become an encumbrance.

How would Hitler get rid of them?

III. Liquidation of the Parties

On the day in March when the deputies of the
Weimar Republic voted to relinquish their power, Hitler, standing before them in
their own parliamentary bailiwick, utterly poised in his brown shirt, did not
spare them. "It is for you, gentlemen of the Reichstag," he declared, "to decide
between war and peace."

But how, one might ask, could they take up the
fight now, when they had in fact already given up the fight years earlier?

At this point, Hitler was no longer even
willing to let the last recalcitrant Reichstag deputies, the Social Democrats -
by now reduced to representing a mere 17.55 percent of the nation's voters -
assume the martyred pose of a persecuted fringe group.

"You talk about persecution!" he thundered in
an impromptu response to an address by the Social Democratic speaker. "I think
that there are only a few of us [in our party] here who did not have to suffer
persecutions in prison from your side . . . You seem to have totally forgotten
that for years our shirts were ripped off our backs because you did not like the
color . . . We have outgrown your persecutions!"

"In those days," he scathingly continued, "our
newspapers were banned and banned and again banned, our meetings were forbidden,
and we were forbidden to speak, I was forbidden to speak, for years on. And now
you say that criticism is salutary!"

The shoe was now on the other foot.

"From now on we National Socialists will make
it possible for the German worker to attain what he is able to demand and insist
on. We National Socialists will be his intercessors. You, gentlemen, are no
longer needed . . . And don't confound us with the bourgeois world. You think
that your star may rise again. Gentlemen, Germany's star will rise and yours
will sink . . . In the life of nations, that which is rotten, old and feeble
passes and does not return."

Finally, Hitler dismissed these bankrupt
Socialists with the words: "I can only tell you: I do not want your votes!
Germany shall be free, but not through you!"

(Quoted in: J. Fest, Hitler, New York: 1974,
p. 408 f.)

Within just half a year, Hitler would succeed
in liquidating all these now passй and essentially irrelevant political parties.
Not just the Socialist Party, already rejected by the people themselves, but all
the other conniving party politicians as well: the conservatives, a century
behind the times, the myopic nationalists, and the boastful Catholic centrists -
all of them agents and collaborators in Germany's road to ruin between 1919 to
1933.

All of these parties had clearly lost their
drive. That some voters still supported them in early 1933, even after Hitler
had become Chancellor, was largely out of habit. Their impetus was gone. The
parties of the Weimar system had botched everything and let the nation go to
ruin. Germany's collapse, her six million unemployed, the widespread hunger, the
demoralization of an entire people: all this was their doing. Now that a strong
leader with broad national support had taken their place, what could they do? As
Joachim Fest would later write, they were "like a spider web with which one
hoped to catch eagles."

Hitler's millions of followers had
rediscovered the primal strength of rough, uncitified man, of a time when men
still had backbone. Theirs was a Dionysian power, one that they would conserve
for the great challenges to come: it wouldn't be needed against the political
parties. A mere shrug of the shoulders, and those would fall apart.

It was fitting that the first to crumble was
the Social Democratic party (SPD). It went out with a whimper.

It had still shown some guts on March 23, when
its Reichstag deputies refused to vote Hitler plenary powers. After 1945 the
Socialist party would glory in that deed, while at the same time taking care not
to add that less than two months later, on May 17, the Social Democratic
deputies decided to approve Hitler's major address to the Reichstag on foreign
policy. It was as if they felt themselves swept along by the surge of popular
support for Hitler, even within the ranks of their own party. Along with the
National Socialist deputies, they voiced their approval for Hitler's policy.

From his perch as Reichstag president, Gцring
turned to glance at the turncoats, and commented: "The world has seen that the
German people are united where their destiny is at stake."

Now that the Social Democratic leadership,
which for so long had railed against Hitler, decided to back him in the
Reichstag, the party's rank and file could hardly be expected to oppose him.
That day marked the of the Social Democratic party's credibility. Following the
example of their own party leadership, the large SPD electorate would,
understandably, now also vote for Hitler.

After this act of capitulation, it was now
child's play for Hitler to liquidate the Social Democratic party. Four weeks
later, on June 22, it was officially dissolved. "No one," Fest has observed,
"expected any show of resistance on the part of the SPD." The party's initials
could more fittingly have been RIP: resquiescat in pace.

The peace would be total. Apart from a few
leftist members of the Reichstag who went into exile and led isolated and
unproductive lives abroad, the now former Socialist deputies continued, each
month, to pocket the pensions that Hitler had allowed them. They walked about
unmolested on the streets of Berlin. A number of them, some with great success,
even threw in their lot with the National Socialists.

Gustav Noske, the lumberjack who became
defense minister - and the most valiant defender of the embattled republic in
the tumultuous months immediately following the collapse of 1918 - acknowledged
honestly in 1944, when the Third Reich was already rapidly breaking down, that
the great majority of the German people still remained true to Hitler because of
the social renewal he had brought to the working class.

After the "Reds," the "Whites" had their turn.
Of the two dozen or so political parties that existed in Germany in 1932-1933, a
number of the smaller ones quietly dissolved themselves without anyone even
noticing their demise. They had been created for no reason other than to aid the
political ambitions of their founders. But now, with no more Reichstag seats in
sight, there was no further point in trying to recruit voters.

The parties of the right, formerly important
but now abandoned by their voters, were conscious of the futility of exping any
further effort or money to subsist artificially. Now lacking any popular
support, one after another they, too, voluntarily disbanded. The "German
National People's Party," abandoned by its bourgeois supporters, was the first
to give up the ghost. A few days later, on June 28, the "State Party" did the
same. The "Bavarian People's Party" and the "German People's Party" took the
same step on July 4.

Of all the conservative mossbacks, the most
difficult to get rid of was Alfred Hugenberg, the media titan who was still a
minister in Hitler's cabinet. Nazis rather disrespectfully called him "the old
porker in the beet patch." Hugenberg ultimately lost his cabinet post because he
overplayed the role of zealous nationalist at a conference in London in June
1933, making a claim, premature to say the least, for the return to Germany of
her colonies, and calling for German economic expansion into the Ukraine! Hitler
regarded this as totally inopportune, particularly at a time when he was making
every effort to reassure his skeptics and critics abroad. After this diplomatic
blunder, Hugenberg had no choice but to resign. Thus departed the once powerful
capitalist who had vowed, on January 30, to politically muzzle the newly named
Chancellor.

His dismissal was a double success for Hitler:
by disavowing an international troublemaker, he reassured those outside the
Germany who had been alarmed by Hugenberg's ill-chosen statements; and he rid
himself of a political liability whose diplomatic gaffe had cost him whatever
standing he had in von Hindenburg's esteem.

The last political factor to go was the
clerico-bourgeois "Center" party. Following its vote on March 23 to give Hitler
plenary powers, the Center had forfeited all credibility as an opposition party.
Its following dwindled away in indifference. After all, if Center leader
Monsignor Kaas decided to side with the Führer in the Reichstag, why shouldn't
the party's rank and file do likewise?

Meanwhile, diplomatic negotiations with the
Vatican on a concordat to regulate relations between the German state and the
Catholic church were close to a favorable conclusion. In this effort, perhaps
more than any other, Hitler manifested patience, cunning, and tact. He needed
political peace with the Church, at least until, with the help of the hierarchy,
he could count completely on the support of Germany's many Catholics.

By voting for Hitler in the Reichstag, Center
leader Kaas and his pious clerics had unsuspectingly fallen into a trap. On July
5, 1933, they declared themselves politically neutral and dissolved themselves
as a party.

As a contemporary observer noted: "All the
things being abolished no longer concerned people very much." With regard to the
rapid demise of the political parties and the other political forces of both the
right and left, Joachim Fest aptly commented: "If anything could have
demonstrated the sapped vitality of the Weimar Republic, it was the ease with
which the institutions that had sustained it let themselves be overwhelmed."
(Quoted in: J. Fest, Hitler, New York: 1974, p. 415.)

To abolish the political parties and swallow
up their once vast networks of voters took only a scant half year, and with
little damage to life or limb. Hitler had succeeded in winning over or at least
neutralizing those who had so recently reviled and jeered him. No one was more
astonished at the rapidity with which the political parties had succumbed than
Hitler himself. "One would never have thought so miserable a collapse possible,"
he remarked in July 1933, after having thrown the last shovelful of dirt on the
graves of the Weimar Republic's once mighty parties.

(J. Fest, Hitler, p. 415.)

IV. Unification of the Labor Unions

Only one significant political factor still
remained: the Marxist trade unions. For many years they had represented one of
the country's most potent forces. Although nominally only an economic factor,
they had also been a major political factor, furnishing the Communists with
their militants and the Social Democrats with the bulk of their voters.

For fifteen years they had been a constant and
fanatical pressure group, stirring up turmoil in the streets and formulating
ever greater demands. The unions had long provided the Left with large amounts
of money, funds that were continually replenished by the contributions of
millions of union members.

Here again, well before the collapse of
party-ridden Weimar Republic, disillusion with the unions had become widespread
among the working masses. They were starving. The hundreds of Socialist and
Communist deputies stood idly by, impotent to provide any meaningful help to the
desperate proletariat.

Their leaders had no proposals to remedy, even
partially, the great distress of the people; no plans for large-scale public
works, no industrial restructuring, no search for markets abroad.

Moreover, they offered no energetic resistance
to the pillaging by foreign countries of the Reich's last financial resources:
this a consequence of the Treaty of Versailles that the German Socialists had
voted to ratify in June of 1919, and which they had never since had the courage
effectively to oppose.

The few palliative modifications that had been
won, wrested with great difficulty from the rapacious Allies, had been achieved
by Gustav Stresemann, the conservative foreign affairs minister. Although he
enjoyed little or no support, even from the politicians, Stresemann fought
stubbornly, in spite of faltering health, to liberate the Reich. Enduring
fainting fits, and with a goiter, growing ever more enormous, knotted around his
neck like a boa constrictor, Stresemann, even as he was dying, was the only
Weimar leader who had seriously attempted to pry away the foreign talons from
the flesh of the German people.

In 1930, 1931 and 1932, German workers had
watched the disaster grow: the number of unemployed rose from two million to
three, to four, to five, then to six million. At the same time, unemployment
benefits fell lower and lower, finally to disappear completely. Everywhere one
saw dejection and privation: emaciated mothers, children wasting away in sordid
lodgings, and thousands of beggars in long sad lines.

The failure, or incapacity, of the leftist
leaders to act, not to mention their insensitivity, had stupefied the working
class. Of what use were such leaders with their empty heads and empty hearts -
and, often enough, full pockets?

Well before January 30, thousands of workers
had already joined up with Hitler's dynamic formations, which were always hard
at it where they were most needed. Many joined the National Socialists when they
went on strike. Hitler, himself a former worker and a plain man like themselves,
was determined to eliminate unemployment root and branch. He wanted not merely
to defend the laborer's right to work, but to make his calling one of honor, to
insure him respect and to integrate him fully into a living community of all the
Germans, who had been divided class against class.

In January 1933, Hitler's victorious troops
were already largely proletarian in character, including numerous hardfisted
street brawlers, many unemployed, who no longer counted economically or
socially.

Meanwhile, membership in the Marxist labor
unions had fallen off enormously: among thirteen million socialist and Communist
voters in 1932, no more than five million were union members. Indifference and
discouragement had reached such levels that many members no longer paid their
union dues. Many increasingly dispirited Marxist leaders began to wonder if
perhaps the millions of deserters were the ones who saw things clearly. Soon
they wouldn't wonder any longer.

Even before Hitler won Reichstag backing for
his "Enabling Act," Germany's giant labor union federation, the ADGB, had begun
to rally to the National Socialist cause. As historian Joachim Fest
acknowledged: "On March 20, the labor federation's executive committee addressed
a kind of declaration of loyalty to Hitler." (J. Fest, Hitler, p. 413.)

Hitler than took a bold and clever step. The
unions had always clamored to have the First of May recognized as a worker's
holiday, but the Weimar Republic had never acceded to their request. Hitler,
never missing an opportunity, grasped this one with both hands. He did more than
grant this reasonable demand: he proclaimed the First of May a national holiday.

Just as the Socialist party had gone from a
vote in the Reichstag against Hitler (March 23, 1933) to a vote of support (May
17, 1933), so did the union leaders make a 180-degree turn within weeks. At one
stroke, Hitler granted to the union what they had vainly asked of every previous
government: a holiday celebrated by the entire nation. He announced that in
order to honor Labor, he would organize the biggest meeting in Germany's history
on the First of May at Tempelhof airfield in Berlin. Caught unprepared, but on
the whole very pleased to take advantage of the situation by throwing in their
lot with National Socialism and, what is more, to take part in a mass
demonstration the like of which even Marxist workers could scarcely imagine, the
union leadership called upon their leftist rank and file to join, with banners
flying, the mass meetings held that May Day across Germany, and to acclaim
Hitler.

I myself attended the memorable meeting at the
Tempelhof field in 1933. By nine o'clock that morning, giant columns, some of
workers, others of youth groups, marching in cadence down the pavement of
Berlin's great avenues, had started off towards the airfield to which Hitler had
called together all Germans. All Germany would follow the rally as it was
transmitted nationwide by radio.

By noon hundreds of thousands of workers -
Hitlerites and non-Hitlerites - were massed on the vast field. The demonstrators
observed impeccable order. Hundreds of tables, quickly set up by the Party,
provided the ever-increasing throngs with sandwiches, sausages, and mugs of beer
at cost, to refresh the new arrivals after their march.

Everyone, of course, was standing, and would
remain so for up to fourteen hours.

A fabulous speaker's platform stood out
against the sky, three stories high, flamboyant with huge flags, as impressive
as a naval shipyard. As the hours went by, thousands of prominent figures took
their seats, including many members of the foreign diplomatic corps. By the
close of the day, a million and a half spectators stretched to the outermost
edges of the immense plain. Soldiers and civilians mingled together. Fanfares
sounded repeatedly. A political meeting no longer, it had become a festival, a
sort of fantastic Bruegelian kermess, where middle-class burghers, generals and
workers all met and fraternized as Germans and as equals.

Night fell and Hitler appeared. His speaker's
rostrum was indeed like the prow of a giant ship. The hundreds of beacons which
had illuminated the great sea of humanity were now extinguished. Suddenly,
Hitler burst forth from the dark, a solitary figure, high in the air, lit by the
dazzling glare of spotlights.

In the dark, a group of determined opponents
could easily have heckled Hitler or otherwise sabotaged the meeting. Perhaps a
third of the onlookers had been Socialists or Communists only three months
previously. But not a single hostile voice was raised during the entire
ceremony. There was only universal acclamation.

Ceremony is the right word for it. It was an
almost magical rite. Hitler and Goebbels had no equals in the arranging of
dedicatory ceremonies of this sort. First there were popular songs, then great
Wagnerian hymns to grip the audience. Germany has a passion for orchestral
music, and Wagner taps the deepest and most secret vein of the German soul, its
romanticism, its inborn sense of the powerful and the grand.

Meanwhile the hundreds of flags floated above
the rostrum, redeemed from the darkness by arrows of light.

Now Hitler strode to the rostrum. For those
standing at the of the field, his face must have appeared vanishingly small, but
his words flooded instantaneously across the acres of people in his audience.

A Latin audience would have preferred a voice
less harsh, more delicately expressive. But there was no doubt that Hitler spoke
to the psyche of the German people.

Germans have rarely had the good fortune to
experience the enchantment of the spoken word. In Germany, the tone has always
been set by ponderous speakers, more fond of elephantine pedantry than
oratorical passion. Hitler, as a speaker, was a prodigy, the greatest orator of
his century. He possessed, above all, what the ordinary speaker lacks: a
mysterious ability to project power.

A bit like a medium or sorcerer, he was
seized, even transfixed, as he addressed a crowd. It responded to Hitler's
projection of power, radiating it back, establishing, in the course of myriad
exchanges, a current that both orator and audience gave to and drew from
equally. One had to personally experience him speaking to understand this
phenomenon.

This special gift is what lay at the basis of
Hitler's ability to win over the masses. His high-voltage, lightning-like
projection transported and transformed all who experienced it. Tens of millions
were enlightened, riveted and inflamed by the fire of his anger, irony, and
passion.

By the time the cheering died away that May
first evening, hundreds of thousands of previously indifferent or even hostile
workers who had come to Tempelhof at the urging of their labor federation
leaders were now won over. They had become followers, like the SA stormtroopers
whom so many there that evening had brawled with in recent years.

The great human sea surged back from Tempelhof
to Berlin. A million and a half people had arrived in perfect order, and their
departure was just as orderly. No bottlenecks halted the cars and busses. For
those of us who witnessed it, this rigorous, yet joyful, discipline of a
contented people was in itself a source of wonder. Everything about the May Day
mass meeting had come off as smoothly clockwork.

The memory of that fabulous crowd thronging
back to the center of Berlin will never leave me. A great many were on foot.
Their faces were now different faces, as though they had been imbued with a
strange and totally new spirit. The non-Germans in the crowd were as if stunned,
and no less impressed than Hitler's fellow countrymen.

The French ambassador, Andrй Franзois-Poncet,
noted:

The foreigners on the speaker's platform as
guests of honor were not alone in carrying away the impression of a truly
beautiful and wonderful public festival, an impression that was created by the
regime's genius for organization, by the night time display of uniforms, by the
play of lights, the rhythm of the music, by the flags and the colorful
fireworks; and they were not alone in thinking that a breath of reconciliation
and unity was passing over the Third Reich.

"It is our wish," Hitler had exclaimed, as
though taking heaven as his witness, "to get along together and to struggle
together as brothers, so that at the hour when we shall come before God, we
might say to him: 'See, Lord, we have changed. The German people are no longer a
people ashamed, a people mean and cowardly and divided. No, Lord! The German
people have become strong in their spirit, in their will, in their perseverance,
in their acceptance of any sacrifice. Lord, we remain faithful to Thee! Bless
our struggle!" (A. Franзois-Poncet, Souvenirs d'une ambassade а Berlin, p. 128.)

Who else could have made such an incantatory
appeal without making himself look ridiculous?

No politician had ever spoken of the rights of
workers with such faith and such force, or had laid out in such clear terms the
social plan he pledged to carry out on behalf of the common people.

The next day, the newspaper of the proletarian
left, the "Union Journal," reported on this mass meeting at which at least two
thirds - a million - of those attending were workers. "This May First was
victory day," the paper summed up.

With the workers thus won over, what further
need was there for the thousands of labor union locals that for so long had
poisoned the social life of the Reich and which, in any case, had accomplished
nothing of a lasting, positive nature?

Within hours of the conclusion of that
"victory" meeting at the Tempelhof field, the National Socialists were able to
peacefully take complete control of Germany's entire labor union organization,
including all its buildings, enterprises and banks. An era of Marxist
obstruction abruptly came to an : from now on, a single national organization
would embody the collective will and interests of all of Germany's workers.

Although he was now well on his way to
creating what he pledged would be a true "government of the people," Hitler also
realized that great obstacles remained. For one thing, the Communist rulers in
Moscow had not dropped their guard - or their guns. Restoring the nation would
take more than words and promises, it would take solid achievements. Only then
would the enthusiasm shown by the working class at the May First mass meeting be
an expression of lasting victory.

How could Hitler solve the great problem that
had defied solution by everyone else (both in Germany and abroad): putting
millions of unemployed back to work?

What would Hitler do about wages? Working
hours? Leisure time? Housing? How would he succeed in winning, at long last,
respect for the rights and dignity of the worker?

How could men's lives be improved -
materially, morally, and, one might even say, spiritually? How would he proceed
to build a new society fit for human beings, free of the inertia, injustices and
prejudices of the past?

"National Socialism," Hitler had declared at
the outset, "has its mission and its hour; it is not just a passing movement but
a phase of history."

The instruments of real power now in his hands
- an authoritarian state, its provinces subordinate but nonetheless organic
parts of the national whole - Hitler had acted quickly to shake himself free of
the last constraints of the impotent sectarian political parties. Moreover, he
was now able to direct a cohesive labor force that was no longer split into a
thousand rivulets but flowed as a single, mighty current.

Hitler was self-confident, sure of the power
of his own conviction. He had no intention, or need, to resort to the use of
physical force. Instead, he inted to win over, one by one, the millions of
Germans who were still his adversaries, and even those who still hated him.

His conquest of Germany had taken years of
careful planning and hard work. Similarly, he would now realize his carefully
worked out plans for transforming the state and society. This meant not merely
changes in administrative or governmental structures, but far-reaching social
programs.

He had once vowed: "The hour will come when
the 15 million people who now hate us will be solidly behind us and will acclaim
with us the new revival we shall create together." Eventually he would succeed
in winning over even many of his most refractory skeptics and adversaries.

His army of converts was already forming
ranks. In a remarkable tribute, historian Joachim Fest felt obliged to
acknowledge unequivocally:

Hitler had moved rapidly from the status of a
demagogue to that of a respected statesman. The craving to join the ranks of the
victors was spreading like an epidemic, and the shrunken minority of those who
resisted the urge were being visibly pushed into isolation - The past was dead.
The future, it seemed, belonged to the regime, which had more and more
followers, which was being hailed everywhere and suddenly had sound reasons on
its side.

"Our power," Hitler was now able to declare,
"no longer belongs to any territorial fraction of the Reich, nor to any single
class of the nation, but to the people in its totality."

Much still remained to be done, however. So
far, Hitler had succeeded in clearing the way of obstacles to his program. Now
the time to build had arrived.

So many others had failed to tackle the many
daunting problems that were now his responsibility. Above all, the nation
demanded a solution to the great problem of unemployment. Could Hitler now
succeed where others had so dismally failed?

V. Where To Find The Billions?

As he stood, silent and preoccupied, at his
chancellery window on that January evening, receiving the acclaim of the crowd,
Hitler was seized with anxiety - and not without reason.

In his memoirs, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht recalled:
"I had the impression that he was a man fairly crushed by the weight of the
responsibility he was taking on - That profound emotional upheaval of which I
was a witness could not possibly have been mere playacting: it betrayed true
feelings." (H. Schacht, Mйmoires d'un magicien, vol. II, p. 52.)

Hitler, however, was a man capable of
overcoming such anxieties. Although he faced an agonizing national tragedy -
immense unemployment, general misery, almost total industrial stagnation - which
no other politician had been able even to ameliorate, this youthful leader would
take on this challenge with an extraordinary sense of purpose and will.

Hitler had no sooner been voted plenary powers
than he rolled up his shirt-sleeves, and begun to carry out his well-laid plans.

Unlike the other responsible - or
irresponsible - politicians of twentieth-century Europe, Hitler did not believe
that fighting for his country's economic health meant having to impassively
accept one setback after another, stand idly by while industries died, or look
on as millions of unemployed workers tramped the streets.

In those days, the only solution to these
problems that was accepted by politicians and economists in the democracies was
to drastically cut sping, both governmental and private. Belt-tightening was the
agreed-upon remedy.

Thus, Germany's leaders prior to Hitler had
cut salaries by 25 percent, limited payment of unemployment benefits to six
months, and reduced total private investment by five sixths. The country's
standard of living had collapsed like a deflated balloon. At the end of six
months the unemployed obviously had not found new jobs. To the contrary, they
were joined by long lines of new unemployed. Deprived of all means of
subsistence, they gravitated to the welfare offices.

People spent less and less, with the
inevitable consequence that industries producing consumer goods closed their
doors, one after another, for lack of orders, thereby sending thousands more
unemployed into the streets. In 1932, Germany's industries were languishing,
their production reduced by half.

Yearly private investment had fallen from
three billion marks to barely 500 million. No new blood had been injected into
the industrial system, no workplaces modernized. The economy stagnated.

The government not only lacked any new
initiatives, it was almost bankrupt. Fiscal receipts had fallen to ten billion
marks, of which the meager and short-term unemployment benefits alone absorbed
two thirds.

Germany couldn't wait for a business upswing
to get the economy moving again. As Hitler had long understood, the government
had to bring economic renewal by bold action and imaginative enterprise.

Unemployment could be combated and eliminated
only by giving industry the financial means to start up anew, to modernize, thus
creating millions of new jobs.

The normal rate of consumption would not be
restored, let alone increased, unless one first raised the starvation-level
allowances that were making purchases of any kind a virtual impossibility. On
the contrary, production and sales would have to be restored before the six
million unemployed could once again become purchasers.

The great economic depression could be
overcome only by restimulating industry, by bringing industry into step with the
times, and by promoting the development of new products.

Because Germany had no petroleum, for example,
the production of synthetic gasoline (from coal) should be encouraged as much as
possible. The technique was already known, but it needed to be applied.
Similarly, Germany was able to produce an artificial substitute for rubber,
"Buna." But the plans for its development and production were still stored away
in file cabinets. Only a small percentage of practical new inventions ever left
the records files.

Great public works projects were another way
to create new jobs, stimulate industrial activity, and revive the economy. For
one thing, Germany's mediocre roads needed vast improvement. Moreover, the
demands of the time called for the construction of a national network of modern
highways. Radiating thousands of kilometers, these great concrete lifelines
would encourage increased commerce and communication among the Reich's many
regions.

New highways would also encourage increased
automobile production. Considering the potential, Germany was still quite
backward in automobile production. It manufactured only one-fifth as many cars
as France.

Nearly ten years earlier, while in his prison
cell, Hitler had already envisioned a formidable system of national highways. He
had also conceived of a small, easily affordable automobile (later known as the
"Volkswagen"), and had even suggested its outline. It should have the shape of a
June bug, he proposed. Nature itself suggested the car's aerodynamic line.

Until Hitler came to power, a car was the
privilege of the rich. It was not financially within the reach of the middle
class, much less of the worker. The "Volkswagen," costing one-tenth as much as
the standard automobile of earlier years, would eventually become a popular work
vehicle and a source of pleasure after work: a way to unwind and get some fresh
air, and of discovering, thanks to the new Autobahn highway network, a
magnificent country that then, in its totality, was virtually unknown to the
German worker.

From the beginning, Hitler wanted this
economical new car to be built for the millions. The production works would also
become one of Germany's most important industrial centers and employers.

During his imprisonment, Hitler had also drawn
up plans for the construction of popular housing developments and majestic
public buildings.

Some of Hitler's rough sketches still survive.
They include groups of individual worker's houses with their own gardens (which
were to be built in the hundreds of thousands), a plan for a covered stadium in
Berlin, and a vast congress hall, unlike any other in the world, that would
symbolize the grandeur of the National Socialist revolution.

"A building with a monumental dome," historian
Werner Maser has explained, "the plan of which he drew while he was writing Mein
Kampf, would have a span of 46 meters, a height of 220 meters, a diameter of 250
meters, and a capacity of 150 to 190 thousand people standing. The interior of
the building would have been 17 times larger than Saint Peter's Cathedral in
Rome." (W. Maser, Hitler, Adolf, p. 100.)

Hitler's imagination, therefore, had long been
teeming with a number of ambitious projects, many of which would eventually be
realized.

Fortunately, the needed entrepreneurs,
managers and technicians were on hand. Hitler would not have to improvise.

Historian Werner Maser, although quite
anti-Hitler - like nearly all of his colleagues (how else would they have found
publishers?) - has acknowledged: "From the beginning of his political career, he
[Hitler] took great pains systematically to arrange for whatever he was going to
need in order to carry out his plans."

"Hitler was distinguished," Maser has also
noted, "by an exceptional intelligence in technical matters." Hitler had
acquired his knowledge by devoting many thousands of hours to technical studies
from the time of his youth.

"Hitler read an endless number of books,"
explained Dr. Schacht. "He acquired a very considerable amount of knowledge and
made masterful use of it in discussions and speeches. In certain respects he was
a man endowed with genius. He had ideas that no one else would ever have thought
of, ideas that resulted in the ending of great difficulties, sometimes by
measures of an astonishing simplicity or brutality."

Many billions of marks would be needed to
begin the great socioeconomic revolution that was destined, as Hitler had always
inted, to make Germany once again the European leader in industry and commerce
and, most urgently, to rapidly wipe out unemployment in Germany. Where would the
money be found? And, once obtained, how would these funds be allotted to ensure
maximum effectiveness in their investment?

Hitler was by no means a dictator in matters
of the economy. He was, rather, a stimulator. His government would undertake to
do only that which private initiative could not.

Hitler believed in the importance of
individual creative imagination and dynamism, in the need for every person of
superior ability and skill to assume responsibility.

He also recognized the importance of the
profit motive. Deprived of the prospect of having his efforts rewarded, the
person of ability often refrains from running risks. The economic failure of
Communism has demonstrated this. In the absence of personal incentives and the
opportunity for real individual initiative, the Soviet "command economy" lagged
in all but a few fields, its industry years behind its competitors.

State monopoly tolls the death of all
initiative, and hence of all progress.

For all men selflessly to pool their wealth
might be marvelous, but it is also contrary to human nature. Nearly every man
desires that his labor shall improve his own condition and that of his family,
and feels that his brain, creative imagination, and persistence well deserve
their reward.

Because it disregarded these basic
psychological truths, Soviet Communism, right to the end, wallowed in economic
mediocrity, in spite of its immense reservoir of manpower, its technical
expertise, and its abundant natural resources, all of which ought to have made
it an industrial and technological giant.

Hitler was always adverse to the idea of state
management of the economy. He believed in elites. "A single idea of genius," he
used to say, "has more value than a lifetime of conscientious labor in an
office."

Just as there are political or intellectual
elites, so also is there an industrial elite. A manufacturer of great ability
should not be restrained, hunted down by the internal revenue services like a
criminal, or be unappreciated by the public. On the contrary, it is important
for economic development that the industrialist be encouraged morally and
materially, as much as possible.

The most fruitful initiatives Hitler would
take from 1933 on would be on behalf of private enterprise. He would keep an eye
on the quality of their directors, to be sure, and would shunt aside
incompetents, quite a few of them at times, but he also supported the best ones,
those with the keenest minds, the most imaginative and bold, even if their
political opinions did not always agree with his own.

"There is no question," he stated very firmly,
"of dismissing a factory owner or director under the pretext that he is not a
National Socialist."

Hitler would exercise the same moderation, the
same pragmatism, in the administrative as well as in the industrial sphere.

What he demanded of his co-workers, above all,
was competence and effectiveness. The great majority of Third Reich
functionaries - some 80 percent - were never enrolled in the National Socialist
party. Several of Hitler's ministers, like Konstantin von Neurath and Schwerin
von Krosigk, and ambassadors to such key posts as Prague, Vienna and Ankara,
were not members of the party. But they were capable.

While Hitler kept a close eye on opportunists
(such as Franz von Papen, who was both intelligent and clever) he knew how to
make the best use of such men, and to honor them and recognize their
achievements.

Similarly, he did not hesitate to keep on
competent bureaucrats chosen by his predecessors. A good example was Dr. Otto
Meissner, who had headed the presidential chancellery under the socialist Ebert
and the conservative von Hindenburg, and who had done everything in his power,
up to the last minute, to torpedo Hitler's accession to power. But Meissner knew
his work, and Hitler wisely kept him on the job. Hitler treated him with respect
and confidence, and Meissner served the the Fцhrer faithfully and efficiently
for twelve years.

Perhaps the most remarkable such case is that
of Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, the most discerning and competent of Germany's
financiers in 1933. A Hitler supporter? By no means! Schacht never was and never
would be a supporter of anyone but himself. But he was the best in the business:
for getting the Reich's economy moving again, he had no equal.

Ten years earlier, at the of 1923, Schacht had
financially rescued the Weimar Republic by helping to invent the "Rentenmark."
He was shrewd and imaginative, and thus capable of understanding and
implementing the boldest of Hitler's plans.

Schacht's personal ambition was immense, but
this was yet another reason for Hitler to give him every possibility to rise as
high as he could. Within weeks of taking power, Hitler appointed him President
of the Reichsbank, and then, a year later, as Economics Minister as well.
Schacht couldn't be happier.

Dangerous? Of course! Doubly so, inasmuch as
Schacht was a capitalist to the core, with close ties to major foreign banking
interests, not excluding Jewish financiers in London and New York. Moreover,
Schacht cared little for Hitler's revolutionary program, which regarded labor as
the true source of national wealth.

Hitler called on the brilliant Dr. Schacht to
devise new ways of acquiring the funds necessary for what he inted to
accomplish. That was a great deal, but it was all. The collaboration went no
further: Schacht was never permitted to intervene in political matters. When
Schacht's financial formulas had served their purpose, the collaboration would.
Until he was dismissed as Reichsbank president in 1939, Hitler made good use of
his extraordinary talents. But Schacht never forgave his dismissal, and would
nurse a seething resentment.

Determined to conjure up billions of marks as
quickly as possible, and by any means available, in early February 1933 Hitler
summoned Schacht's predecessor as Reichsbank president, Dr. Hans Luther, to his
office. Luther, who had been appointed to his post in 1930 by a previous
administration, had old-fashioned views of extreme prudence in the management of
state funds. Since the state's coffers were nearly empty, he was all the more
prudent. His detachable collar, stiff as a calling card, proclaimed the rigidity
of his principles. He belonged to the old school of accountants who spend a
dollar only when they have a dollar.

Hitler was well aware that this capable man
was not happy to be presiding over a central bank that lacked funds. It was not,
however, to have Luther empty the state treasury that Hitler had summoned him,
but to ask him to devise new means of financing Germany's recovery.

It was a question of imagination, but Luther's
brain was not a volcano of new ideas; it was a calculator.

"How much money," Hitler asked him, "can you
put at my disposal for creating jobs?" Luther Hesitated to respond immediately;
his mental calculator began functioning. After working out the calculations in
his mind, he responded as though speaking to the director of a large financial
firm: "One hundred and fifty million."

An eloquent answer, it showed just how
completely Hitler's predecessors and their colleagues were lacking in their
understanding of the scope of the resources that would be needed to save the
Reich. One hundred and fifty million, at a time when the German government was
pouring a billion marks every three months into unemployment benefits alone!

With a budget of 150 million marks, the German
treasury would have been hard put to spare even three or four marks a day to the
five or six or seven million unemployed over one short week.

Clearly, this question had never been put to
Dr. Luther, and no Reich leader before Hitler had ever troubled to learn how to
go about raising the funds that would be indispensable for carrying out a
serious program to put Germany back to work.

Obviously, then, Dr. Luther was not the person
to put Hitler's program into effect. The new Chancellor then thought of Schacht,
the sly old fox. He was always good for a trick, and now Hitler needed some of
his magic.

"Herr Schacht," he said, "we are assuredly in
agreement on one point: no other single task facing the government at the moment
can be so truly urgent as conquering unemployment. That will take a lot of
money. Do you see any possibility of finding it apart from the Reichsbank?" And
after a moment, he added: "How much would it take? Do you have any idea?"

Wishing to win Schacht over by appealing to
his ambition, Hitler smiled and then asked: "Would you be willing to once again
assume presidency of the Reichsbank?" Schacht let on that he had a sentimental
concern for Dr. Luther, and did not want to hurt the incumbent's feelings.
Playing along, Hitler reassured Schacht that he would find an appropriate new
job elsewhere for Luther.

Schacht then pricked up his ears, drew himself
up, and focused his big round eyes on Hitler: "Well, if that's the way it is,"
he said, "then I am ready to assume the presidency of the Reichsbank again."

His great dream was being realized. Schacht
had been president of the Reichsbank between 1923 and 1930, but had been
dismissed. Now he would return in triumph. He felt vindicated. Within weeks, the
ingenious solution to Germany's pressing financial woes would burst forth from
his inventive brain.

"It was necessary," Schacht later explained,
"to discover a method that would avoid inflating the investment holdings of the
Reichsbank immoderately and consequently increasing the circulation of money
excessively."

"Therefore," he went on, "I had to find some
means of getting the sums that were lying idle in pockets and banks, without
meaning for it to be long term and without having it undergo the risk of
depreciation. That was the reasoning behind the Mefo bonds."

What were these "Mefo" bonds? Mefo was a
contraction of the Metallurgische Forschungs-GmbH (Metallurgic Research
Company). With a startup capitalization of one billion marks - which Hitler and
Schacht arranged to be provided by the four giant firms of Krupp, Siemens,
Deutsche Werke and Rheinmetall - this company would eventually promote many
billions of marks worth of investment.

Enterprises, old and new, that filled
government orders had only to draw drafts on Mefo for the amounts due. These
drafts, when presented to the Reichsbank, were immediately convertible into
cash. The success of the Mefo program depended entirely on public acceptance of
the Mefo bonds. But the wily Schacht had planned well. Since Mefo bonds were
short-term bonds that could be cashed in at any time, there was no real risk in
buying, accepting or holding them. They bore an interest of four percent - a
quite acceptable figure in those days - whereas banknotes hidden under the
mattress earned nothing. The public quickly took all this into consideration and
eagerly accepted the bonds.

While the Reichsbank was able to offer from
its own treasury a relatively insignificant 150 million marks for Hitler's war
on unemployment, in just four years the German public subscribed more than 12
billion marks worth of Mefo bonds!

These billions, the fruit of the combined
imagination, ingenuity and astuteness of Hitler and Schacht, swept away the
temporizing and fearful conservatism of the bankers. Over the next four years,
this enormous credit reserve would make miracles possible.

Soon after the initial billion-mark credit,
Schacht added another credit of 600 million in order to finance the start of
Hitler's grand program for highway construction. This Autobahn program provided
immediate work for 100,000 of the unemployed, and eventually assured wages for
some 500,000 workers.

As large as this outlay was, it was
immediately offset by a corresponding cutback in government unemployment
benefits, and by the additional tax revenue generated as a result of the
increase in living standard (sping) of the newly employed.

Within a few months, thanks to the credit
created by the Mefo bonds, private industry once again dared to assume risks and
expand. Germans returned to work by the hundreds of thousands.

Was Schacht solely responsible for this
extraordinary turnaround? After the war, he answered for himself as a Nuremberg
Tribunal defendant, where he was charged with having made possible the Reich's
economic revival:

I don't think Hitler was reduced to begging
for my help. If I had not served him, he would have found other methods, other
means. He was not a man to give up. It's easy enough for you to say, Mr.
Prosecutor, that I should have watched Hitler die and not lifted a finger. But
the entire working class would have died with him!

Even Marxists recognized Hitler's success, and
their own failure. In the June 1934 issue of the Zeitschrift fьr Sozialismus,
the journal of the German Social Democrats in exile, this acknowledgement
appears:

Faced with the despair of proletarians reduced
to joblessness, of young people with diplomas and no future, of the middle
classes of merchants and artisans condemned to bankruptcy, and of farmers
terribly threatened by the collapse in agricultural prices, we all failed. We
weren't capable of offering the masses anything but speeches about the glory of
socialism.

VI. The Social Revolution

Hitler's tremendous social achievement in
putting Germany's six million unemployed back to work is seldom acknowledged
today. Although it was much more than a transitory achievement, "democratic"
historians routinely dismiss it in just a few lines. Since 1945, not a single
objective scholarly study has been devoted to this highly significant, indeed
unprecedented, historical phenomenon.

Similarly neglected is the body of sweeping
reforms that dramatically changed the condition of the worker in Germany.
Factories were transformed from gloomy caverns to spacious and healthy work
centers, with natural lighting, surrounded by gardens and playing fields.
Hundreds of thousands of attractive houses were built for working class
families. A policy of several weeks of paid vacation was introduced, along with
week and holiday trips by land and sea. A wide-ranging program of physical and
cultural education for young workers was established, with the world's best
system of technical training. The Third Reich's social security and workers'
health insurance system was the world's most modern and complete.

This remarkable record of social achievement
is routinely hushed up today because it is embarrasses those who uphold the
orthodox view of the Third Reich. Otherwise, readers might begin to think that
perhaps Hitler was the greatest social builder of the twentieth century.

Because Hitler's program of social reform was
a crucially important - indeed, essential - part of his life work, a realization
of this fact might induce people to view Hitler with new eyes. Not surprisingly,
therefore, all this is passed over in silence. Most historians insist on
treating Hitler and the Third Reich simplistically, as part of a Manichaean
morality play of good versus evil.

Nevertheless, restoring work and bread to
millions of unemployed who had been living in misery for years; restructuring
industrial life; conceiving and establishing an organization for the effective
defense and betterment of the nation's millions of wage earners; creating a new
bureaucracy and judicial system that guaranteed the civic rights of each member
of the national community, while simultaneously holding each person to his or
her responsibilities as a German citizen: this organic body of reforms was part
of a single, comprehensive plan, which Hitler had conceived and worked out years
earlier.

Without this plan, the nation would have
collapsed into anarchy. All-encompassing, this program included broad industrial
recovery as well as detailed attention to even construction of comfortable inns
along the new highway network.

It took several years for a stable social
structure to emerge from the French Revolution. The Soviets needed even more
time: five years after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, hundreds of thousands
of Russians were still dying of hunger and disease. In Germany, by contrast, the
great machinery was in motion within months, with organization and
accomplishment quickly meshing together.

The single task of constructing a national
highway system that was without parallel in the world might have occupied a
government for years. First, the problem had to be studied and assessed. Then,
with due consideration for the needs of the population and the economy, the
highway system had to be carefully planned it all its particulars.

As usual, Hitler had been remarkably
farsighted. The concrete highways would be 24 meters in width. They would be
spanned by hundreds of bridges and overpasses. To make sure that the entire
Autobahn network would be in harmony with the landscape, a great deal of natural
rock would be utilized. The artistically planned roadways would come together
and diverge as if they were large-scale works of art. The necessary service
stations and motor inns would be thoughtfully integrated into the overall
scheme, each facility built in harmony with the local landscape and
architectural style.

The original plan called for 7,000 kilometers
of roadway. This projection would later be increased to 10,000, and then, after
Austria was reunited with Germany, to 11,000 kilometers.

The financial boldness equalled the technical
vision. These expressways were toll free, which seemed foolhardy to conservative
financiers. But the savings in time and labor, and the dramatic increase in
traffic, brought increased tax revenues, notably from gasoline.

Germany was thus building for herself not only
a vast highway network, but an avenue to economic prosperity.

These greatly expanded transport facilities
encouraged the development of hundreds of new business enterprises along the new
expressways. By eliminating congestion on secondary roads, the new highways
stimulated travel by hundreds of thousands of tourists, and with it increased
tourism commerce.

Even the wages paid out to the men who built
the Reichsautobahn network brought considerable indirect benefits. First, they
allowed a drastic cut in payments of unemployment benefits, or 25 percent of the
total paid in wages. Second, the many workers employed in constructing the
expressways - 100,000, and later 150,000 - spent much of the additional 75
percent, which in turn generated increased tax revenues.

Imagine the problems, even before the first
road was opened for traffic, posed by the mobilization of so many tens of
thousands set to work in often uninhabited regions, in marshy areas, or in the
shadows of Alpine peaks! It's hard enough for 150,000 men to leave their homes
and camp out in often rough terrain. But in addition, it was necessary, from the
outset, to insure tolerable living conditions for the columns of men who had
agreed to work by the sweat of their brows under the open sky.

In France, it was all but unthinkable in those
days for a man out of work to move even 20 kilometers away to search for a new
job. He was practically glued to his native village, his garden, and the corner
cafe. The Germans were fundamentally no different, but by 1933 they were fed up
with their enforced idleness. By pouring concrete, using a pick, or whatever it
took, this hard-pressed people would bring dignity back in their lives.

No one balked at the inconvenience, the
absence from home, or the long journey. The will to live a productive and
meaningful life outweighed all other considerations.

To keep up the worker's morale and spirit,
lest he feel isolated or that he was merely being exploited, no effort was
spared to provide material comfort, entertainment and instruction. The world had
never before seen its like in any great construction project. At last, workers
felt they were being treated like respected human beings who had bodies to be
satisfied, hearts to be comforted, and brains to be enlightened.

Camp sites, supply bases, and recreation
facilities were systematically set up, with everything moving forward
methodically as the construction advanced. Fourteen mobile crews that provided
motion picture entertainment traveled along, moving from one construction site
to the next. And always and everywhere, labor was honored and celebrated.

Hitler personally dug the first spadeful of
earth for the first Autobahn highway, linking Frankfurt-am-Main with Darmstadt.
For the occasion, he brought along Dr. Schacht, the man whose visionary credit
wizardry had made the project possible. The official procession moved ahead,
three cars abreast in front, then six across, spanning the entire width of the
autobahn.

The Second World War would abruptly halt work
on this great construction undertaking. But what was envisioned and created
remains as a deathless testimony to a man and an era.

Hitler's plan to build thousands of low-cost
homes also demanded a vast mobilization of manpower. He had envisioned housing
that would be attractive, cozy, and affordable for millions of ordinary German
working-class families. He had no intention of continuing to tolerate, as his
predecessors had, cramped, ugly "rabbit warren" housing for the German people.
The great barracks-like housing projects on the outskirts of factory towns,
packed with cramped families, disgusted him.

The greater part of the houses he would build
were single story, detached dwellings, with small yards where children could
romp, wives could grow vegetable and flower gardens, while the bread-winners
could read their newspapers in peace after the day's work. These single-family
homes were built to conform to the architectural styles of the various German
regions, retaining as much as possible the charming local variants.

Wherever there was no practical alternative to
building large apartment complexes, Hitler saw to it that the individual
apartments were spacious, airy and enhanced by surrounding lawns and gardens
where the children could play safely.

The new housing was, of course, built in
conformity with the highest standards of public health, a consideration
notoriously neglected in previous working-class projects.

Generous loans, amortizable in ten years, were
granted to newly married couples so they could buy their own homes. At the birth
of each child, a fourth of the debt was cancelled. Four children, at the normal
rate of a new arrival every two and a half years, sufficed to cancel the entire
loan debt.

Once, during a conversation with Hitler, I
expressed my astonishment at this policy. "But then, you never get back the
total amount of your loans?," I asked. "How so?" he replied, smiling. "Over a
period of ten years, a family with four children brings in much more than our
loans, through the taxes levied on a hundred different items of consumption."

As it happened, tax revenues increased every
year, in proportion to the rise in expitures for Hitler's social programs. In
just a few years, revenue from taxes tripled. Hitler's Germany never experienced
a financial crisis.

To stimulate the moribund economy demanded the
nerve, which Hitler had, to invest money that the government didn't yet have,
rather than passively waiting - in accordance with "sound" financial principles
- for the economy to revive by itself.

Today, our whole era is dying economically
because we have succumbed to fearful hesitation. Enrichment follows investment,
not the other way around.

Since Hitler, only Ronald Reagan has seemed to
understand this. As President, he realized that to restore prosperity in the
United States meant boldly stimulating the economy with credits and a drastic
reduction in taxes, instead of waiting for the country to emerge from economic
stagnation on its own.

Even before the year 1933 had ended, Hitler
had succeeded in building 202,119 housing units. Within four years he would
provide the German people with nearly a million and a half (1,458,128) new
dwellings!

Moreover, workers would no longer be exploited
as they had been. A month's rent for a worker could not exceed 26 marks, or
about an eighth of the average wage then. Employees with more substantial
salaries paid monthly rents of up to 45 marks maximum.

Equally effective social measures were taken
in behalf of farmers, who had the lowest incomes. In 1933 alone 17,611 new farm
houses were built, each of them surrounded by a parcel of land one thousand
square meters in size. Within three years, Hitler would build 91,000 such
farmhouses. The rental for such dwellings could not legally exceed a modest
share of the farmer's income. This unprecedented owment of land and housing was
only one feature of a revolution that soon dramatically improved the living
standards of the Reich's rural population.

The great work of national construction rolled
along. An additional 100,000 workers quickly found employment in repairing the
nation's secondary roads. Many more were hired to work on canals, dams, drainage
and irrigation projects, helping to make fertile some of nation's most barren
regions.

Everywhere industry was hiring again, with
some firms - like Krupp, IG Farben and the large automobile manufacturers -
taking on new workers on a very large scale. As the country became more
prosperous, car sales increased by more than 80,000 units in 1933 alone.
Employment in the auto industry doubled. Germany was gearing up for full
production, with private industry leading the way.

The new government lavished every assistance
on the private sector, the chief factor in employment as well as production.
Hitler almost immediately made available 500 million marks in credits to private
business.

This start-up assistance given to German
industry would repay itself many times over. Soon enough, another two billion
marks would be loaned to the most enterprising companies. Nearly half would go
into new wages and salaries, saving the treasury an estimated three hundred
million marks in unemployment benefits. Added to the hundreds of millions in tax
receipts spurred by the business recovery, the state quickly recovered its
investment, and more.

Hitler's entire economic policy would be based
on the following equation: risk large sums to undertake great public works and
to spur the renewal and modernization of industry, then later recover the
billions invested through invisible and painless tax revenues. It didn't take
long for Germany to see the results of Hitler's recovery formula.

Economic recovery, as important as it was,
nevertheless wasn't Hitler's only objective. As he strived to restore full
employment, Hitler never lost sight of his goal of creating a organization
powerful enough to stand up to capitalist owners and managers, who had shown
little concern for the health and welfare of the entire national community.

Hitler would impose on everyone - powerful
boss and lowly wage earner alike - his own concept of the organic social
community. Only the loyal collaboration of everyone could assure the prosperity
of all classes and social groups.

Consistent with their doctrine, Germany's
Marxist leaders had set class against class, helping to bring the country to the
brink of economic collapse. Deserting their Marxist unions and political parties
in droves, most workers had come to realize that the less strikes and grievances
their leaders incited only crippled production, and thus the workers as well.

By the of 1932, in any case, the discredited
labor unions were drowning in massive debt that realistically could never be
repaid. Some of the less scrupulous union officials, sensing the oncoming
catastrophe, had begun stealing hundreds of thousands of marks from the workers
they represented. The Marxist leaders had failed: socially, financially and
morally.

Every joint human activity requires a leader.
The head of a factory or business is also the person naturally responsible for
it. He oversees every aspect of production and work. In Hitler's Germany, the
head of a business had to be both a capable director and a person concerned for
the social justice and welfare of his employees. Under Hitler, many owners and
managers who had proven to be unjust, incompetent or recalcitrant lost their
jobs, or their businesses.

A considerable number of legal guarantees
protected the worker against any abuse of authority at the workplace. Their
purpose was to insure that the rights of workers were respected, and that
workers were treated as worthy collaborators, not just as animated tools. Each
industrialist was legally obliged to collaborate with worker delegates in
drafting shop regulations that were not imposed from above but instead adapted
to each business enterprise and its particular working conditions. These
regulations had to specify "the length of the working day, the time and method
of paying wages, and the safety rules, and to be posted throughout the factory,"
within easy access of both the worker whose interests might be angered and the
owner or manager whose orders might be subverted.

The thousands of different, individual
versions of such regulations served to create a healthy rivalry, with every
factory group vying to outdo the others in efficiency and justice.

One of the first reforms to benefit German
workers was the establishment of paid vacations. In France, the leftist Popular
Front government would noisily claim, in 1936, to have originated legally
mandated paid vacations - and stingy ones at that, only one week per year. But
it was actually Hitler who first established them, in 1933 - and they were two
or three times more generous.

Under Hitler, every factory employee had the
legal right to paid vacation. Previously, paid vacations had not normally exceed
four or five days, and nearly half of the younger workers had no vacation time
at all. If anything, Hitler favored younger workers; the youngest workers
received more generous vacations. This was humane and made sense: a young person
has more need of rest and fresh air to develop his maturing strength and vigor.
Thus, they enjoyed a full 18 days of paid vacation per year.

Today, more than half a century later, these
figures have been surpassed, but in 1933 they far exceeded European norms.

The standard vacation was twelve days. Then,
from the age of 25 on, it went up to 18 days. After ten years with the company,
workers got a still longer vacation: 21 days, or three times what the French
socialists would grant the workers of their country in 1936.

Hitler introduced the standard forty-hour work
week in Europe. As for overtime work, it was now compensated, as nowhere else in
the continent at the time, at an increased pay rate. And with the eight-hour
work day now the norm, overtime work became more readily available.

In another innovation, work breaks were made
longer: two hours each day, allowing greater opportunity for workers to relax,
and to make use of the playing fields that large industries were now required to
provide.

Whereas a worker's right to job security had
been virtually non-existent, now an employee could no longer be dismissed at the
sole discretion of the employer. Hitler saw to it that workers' rights were
spelled out and enforced. Henceforth, an employer had to give four weeks notice
before firing an employee, who then had up to two months to appeal the
dismissal. Dismissals could also be annulled by the "Courts of Social Honor" (Ehrengerichte).

This Court was one of three great institutions
that were established to protect German workers. The others were the "Labor
Commissions" and the "Council of Trust."

The "Council of Trust" (Vertrauensrat) was
responsible for establishing and developing a real spirit of community between
management and labor. "In every business enterprise," the 1934 "Labor Charter"
law stipulated, "the employer and head of the enterprise (Führer), the employees
and workers, personnel of the enterprise, shall work jointly toward the goal of
the enterprise and the common good of the nation."

No longer would either be exploited by the
other - neither the worker by arbitrary whim of the employer, nor the employer
through the blackmail of strikes for political ends.

Article 35 of the "Labor Charter" law stated:
"Every member of an enterprise community shall assume the responsibility
required by his position in said common enterprise." In short, each enterprise
would be headed by a dynamic executive, charged with a sense of the greater
community - no longer a selfish capitalist with unconditional, arbitrary power.

"The interest of the community may require
that an incapable or unworthy employer be relieved of his duties," the "Labor
Charter" stipulated. The employer was no longer unassailable, an all-powerful
boss with the last word on hiring and firing his staff. He, too, would be
subject to the workplace regulations, which he was now obliged to respect no
less than the least of his employees. The law conferred the honor and
responsibility of authority on the employer only insofar as he merited it.

Every business enterprise of twenty or more
persons now acquired a "Council of Trust" (Vertrauensrat), two to ten members of
which were chosen from among the staff by the chief executive. The law's
implementation ordinance of March 10, 1934, further stated:

The staff shall be called upon to decide for
or against the proposed list in a secret vote, and all salaried employees,
including apprentices of twenty-one years of age or older, will take part in the
vote. Voting is done by putting a number before the names of the candidates in
order of preference, or by striking out certain names.

Unlike the enterprise councils (Betriebsrдte)
of pre-Hitler Germany, the Council of Trust was no longer a tool of one class.
Comprising members from all levels of the enterprise, it was now an instrument
of teamwork between classes. Obliged to coordinate their interests, former
adversaries in the workplace now cooperated in establishing, by mutual consent,
the regulations which determined working conditions.

The Council has the duty to develop mutual
trust within the enterprise. It will advise on all measures serving to improve
carrying out the work of the enterprise, and on standards relating to general
work conditions, in particular those that concern measures ting to reinforce
feelings of solidarity between the members themselves and between the members
and the enterprise, or ting to improve the personal situation of the members of
the enterprise commun-ity. The Council also has the obligation to intervene to
settle disputes. It must be heard before the imposition of fines based on
workshop regulations.

The law further required that, before assuming
their duties, members of the Work Council had to take an oath before all their
fellow workers to "carry out their duties only for the good of the enterprise
and of all citizens, setting aside any personal interest, and in their behavior
and manner of living to serve as model representatives of the enterprise."

Every 30th of April, on the eve of the great
national holiday of labor, Council terms ended and new elections were held. This
helped to weed out incompetence, overcome stagnation, and prevent arrogance or
careerism on the part of Council members.

The business enterprise paid a salary to each
Council member, just as if he were employed in the office or on the shop floor,
and had to "assume all costs resulting from the regular fulfillment of the
duties of the Council."

The second institution established to insure
the orderly development of the new German social system was the "Labor
Commission" (Reichstreuhдnder der Arbeit), the members of which were essentially
conciliators and arbitrators. They were charged with dealing with and overcoming
the inevitable frictions of the workplace. It was their function to see to it
that the Councils of Trust functioned harmoniously and efficiently, and to
ensure that a given business enterprise's regulations were carried out to the
letter.

Each of the thirteen Labor Commissions
operated in its own district of the Reich. As arbitrators, they were independent
of owners and employees.

Appointed by the state, they represented
rather the interests of everyone in the enterprise, and the interests of the
national community. To minimize arbitrary or unfounded rulings, the Labor
Commissions relied on the advice of a "Consultative Council of Experts,"
consisting of 18 members selected from a cross section of the economy in each
territorial district. As a further safeguard of impartiality, a third agency was
superimposed on the Councils of Trust and the thirteen Commissions: the
Tribunals of Social Honor.

Through these institutions, the German worker,
from 1933 on, could count on a system of justice created especially for him,
empowered to "adjudicate all grave infractions of the social duties based on the
enterprise community." Examples of such "violations of social honor" were cases
in which an employer, abusing his power, mistreated his staff, or impugned the
honor of his subordinates; in which a staff member threatened the harmony of the
workplace by spiteful agitation; or in which a Council member misused or
published confidential business information discovered in the course of his
work.

Thirteen "Courts of Social Honor,"
corresponding to the 13 Commissions, were established. The presiding judge was
not a party hack or ideologue; he was a career jurist, above narrow interest.
The enterprise concerned played a role in the Tribunal's proceedings: two
assistant judges, one representing management, the other a member of the Council
of Trust, assisted the presiding judge.

Each Court of Social Honor (Ehrengericht),
like any other court of law, had the means to enforce its decisions. There were
nuances, though. In mild cases, decisions might be limited to a reprimand. In
more serious cases, the guilty party could be fined up to 10,000 marks. Special
sanctions, precisely adapted to the circumstances, were provided for. These
included mandatory change of employment and dismissal of a chief executive, or
his agent, who was found delinquent in his duty. In the event of a contested
decision, the finding could be appealed to a Supreme Court in Berlin - yet
another level of protection.

In the Third Reich, the worker knew that
"exploitation of his physical strength in bad faith or in violation of his
honor" was no longer tolerated. He had obligations to the community, but he
shared these obligations with every other member of the enterprise, from the
chief executive to the messenger boy. Finally, the German worker had clearly
defined social rights, which were arbitrated and enforced by indepent agencies.
And while all this had been achieved in an atmosphere of justice and moderation,
it nevertheless constituted a genuine social revolution.

By the of 1933, the first effects of Hitler's
revolution in the workplace were being felt. Germany had already come a long way
from the time when grimy bathrooms and squalid courtyards were the sole sanitary
and recreational facilities available to workers.

Factories and shops, large and small, were
altered or transformed to conform to the strictest standards of cleanliness and
hygiene: interiors, so often dark and stifling, were opened up to light; playing
fields were constructed; rest areas where workers could unbend during break,
were set aside; employee cafeterias and respectable locker rooms were opened.
The larger industrial establishments, in addition to providing the normally
required conventional sports facilities, were obliged to put in swimming pools!

In just three years, these achievements would
reach unimagined heights: more than two thousand factories refitted and
beautified; 23,000 work premises modernized; 800 buildings designed exclusively
for meetings; 1,200 playing fields; 13,000 sanitary facilities; 17,000
cafeterias.

To assure the healthy development of the
working class, physical education courses were instituted for younger workers.
Some 8,000 were eventually organized. Technical training was equally emphasized.
Hundreds of work schools, and thousands of technical courses were created. There
were examinations for professional competence, and competitions in which
generous prizes were awarded to outstanding masters of their craft.

Eight hundred departmental inspectors and
17,300 local inspectors were employed to conscientiously monitor and promote
these improvements.

To provide affordable vacations for German
workers on a hitherto unprecedented scale, Hitler established the "Strength
through Joy" program. As a result, hundreds of thousands of workers were now
able to make relaxing vacation trips on land and sea each summer. Magnificent
cruise ships were built, and special trains brought vacationers to the mountains
and the seashore. In just a few years, Germany's working-class tourists would
log a distance equivalent to 54 times the circumference of the earth! And thanks
to generous state subsidies, the cost to workers of these popular vacation
excursions was nearly insignificant.

Were Hitler's reforms perfect? Doubtless there
were flaws, blunders and drawbacks. But what were a few inevitable mistakes
beside the immense achievements?

Was Hitler's transformation of the lot of the
working class authoritarian? Without a doubt. And yet, for a people that had
grown sick and tired of anarchy, this new authoritarianism wasn't regarded as an
imposition. In fact, people have always accepted a strong man's leadership.

In any case, there is no doubt that the
attitude of the German working class, which was still two-thirds non-Nazi at the
start of 1933, soon changed completely. As Belgian author Marcel Laloire noted
at the time:

When you make your way through the cities of
Germany and go into the working-class districts, go through the factories, the
construction yards, you are astonished to find so many workers on the job
sporting the Hitler insignia, to see so many flags with the swastika, black on a
bright red background, in the most densely populated districts.

Hitler's "German Labor Front" (Deutsche
Arbeitsfront), which incorporated all workers and employers, was for the most
part eagerly accepted. The steel spades of the sturdy young lads of the
"National Labor Service" (Reichsarbeitsdienst) could also be seen gleaming along
the highways.

Hitler created the National Labor Service not
only to alleviate unemployment, but to bring together, in absolute equality, and
in the same uniform, both the sons of millionaires and the sons of the poorest
families for several months' common labor and living.

All performed the same work, all were subject
to the same discipline; they enjoyed the same pleasures and benefited from the
same physical and moral development. At the same construction sites and in the
same barracks, Germans became conscious of what they had in common, grew to
understand one another, and discarded their old prejudices of class and caste.

After a hitch in the National Labor Service, a
young worker knew that the rich man's son was not a pampered monster, while the
young lad of wealthy family knew that the worker's son had no less honor than a
nobleman or an heir to riches; they had lived and worked together as comrades.
Social hatred was vanishing, and a socially united people was being born.

Hitler could go into factories - something few
men of the so-called Right would have risked in the past - and hold forth to
crowds of workers, at times in the thousands, as at the huge Siemens works. "In
contrast to the von Papens and other country gentlemen," he might tell them, "in
my youth I was a worker like you. And in my heart of hearts, I have remained
what I was then."

During his twelve years in power, no untoward
incident ever occurred at any factory he visited. Hitler was at home when he
went among the people, and he was received like a member of the family returning
home after making a success of himself.

But the Chancellor of the Third Reich wanted
more than popular approval. He wanted that approval to be freely, widely, and
repeatedly expressed by popular vote. No people was ever be more frequently
asked for their electoral opinion than the German people of that era - five
times in five years.

For Hitler, it was not enough that the people
voted from time to time, as in the previous democratic system. In those days,
voters were rarely appealed to, and when they expressed an opinion, they were
often ill-informed and apathetic. After an election, years might go by, during
which the politicians were heedless and inaccessible, the electorate powerless
to vote on their actions.

To enable the German public to express its
opinion on the occasion of important events of social, national, or
international significance, Hitler provided the people a new means of approving
or rejecting his own actions as Chancellor: the plebiscite.

Hitler recognized the right of all the people,
men and women alike, to vote by secret ballot: to voice their opinion of his
policies, or to make a well-grounded judgment on this or that great decision in
domestic or foreign affairs. Rather than a formalistic routine, democracy became
a vital, active program of supervision that was renewed annually.

The articles of the "Plebiscite Law" were
brief and clear:

1. The Reich government may ask the people
whether or not it approves of a measure planned by or taken by the government.
This may also apply to a law.

2. A measure submitted to plebiscite will be
considered as established when it receives a simple majority of the votes. This
will apply as well to a law modifying the Constitution.

3. If the people approves the measure in
question, it will be applied in conformity with article III of the Law for
Overcoming the Distress of the People and the Reich.

The Reich Interior Ministry is authorized to
take all legal and administrative measures necessary to carry out this law.

Berlin, July 14, 1933.

Hitler, Frick

The electoral pledge given by Hitler that day
was not vain rhetoric. One national referendum followed another: in 1933, in
1934, in 1936, and in 1938, not to mention the Saar plebiscite of 1935, which
was held under international supervision.

The ballot was secret, and the voter was not
constrained. No one could have prevented a German from voting no if he wished.
And, in fact, a certain number did vote no in every plebiscite. Millions of
others could just as easily have done the same. However, the percentage of "No"
votes remained remarkably low - usually under ten percent. In the Saar region,
where the plebiscite of January 1935 was supervised from start to finish by the
Allies, the result was the same as in the rest of the Reich: more than 90
percent voted "Yes" to unification with Hitler's Germany! Hitler had no fear of
such secret ballot plebiscites because the German people invariably supported
him.

From the first months of 1933, his
accomplishments were public fact, for all to see. Before end of the year,
unemployment in Germany had fallen from more than 6,000,000 to 3,374,000. Thus,
2,627,000 jobs had been created since the previous February, when Hitler began
his "gigantic task!" A simple question: Who in Europe ever achieved similar
results in so short a time?

More than two and a half million working-class
homes once again knew bread and joy; more than ten million men, women and
children of the working class, after years of want, had regained their vigor,
and had been returned to the national community.

Hitler's popularity took on some astonishing,
indeed comical, aspects. "A brand of canned herring," Joachim Fest relates, "was
called 'Good Adolf.' Coin banks were made in the form of SA caps. Bicarbonate of
soda was recommended with the advertising slogan 'My Struggle (Mein Kampf)
against flatulence'! Pictures of Hitler appeared on neckties, handkerchiefs,
pocket mirrors, and the swastika decorated ash trays and beer mugs, or served as
an advertisement for a brand of margarine." Annoyed by such fawning (and
exploitative) use of his name, and the emblem of his party, Hitler ordered that
it be discontinued immediately.

The economic and social transformation of the
Reich impressed observers no less than the political transformation wrought by
the leader of National Socialism. Gottfried Benn, Germany's greatest poet of
that era - and a man of the Left - wrote to an expatriate friend, Klaus Mann:

I personally declare myself in favor of the
new State, because it is my people that is making its way now. Who am I to
exclude myself; do I know anything better? No! Within the limits of my powers I
can try to guide the people to where I would like to see it - My intellectual
and economic existence, my language, my life, my human relationships, the entire
sum of my brain, I owe primarily to this nation. My ancestors came from it; my
children return to it - There are moments in which this whole tormented life
falls away and nothing exists but the plains, expanses, seasons, soil, simple
words: my people. (See: J. Fest, Hitler, New York: 1974, p. 428.)

In his detailed and critical biography of
Hitler, Joachim Fest limited his treatment of Hitler's extraordinary social
achievements in 1933 to a few paragraphs. All the same, Fest did not refrain
from acknowledging:

The regime insisted that it was not the rule
of one social class above all others, and by granting everyone opportunities to
rise, it in fact demonstrated class neutrality - These measures did indeed break
through the old, petrified social structures. They tangibly improved the
material condition of much of the population. (J. Fest, Hitler, pp. 434-435.)

Not without reason were the swastika banners
waving proudly throughout the working-class districts where, just a year ago,
they had been unceremoniously torn down.

How Hitler Consolidated Power in Germany and
Launched A Social Revolution

The First Years of the Third Reich

LEON DEGRELLE

I. Who Would End the Bankruptcy?

"We have the power. Now our gigantic work
begins."

Those were Hitler's words on the night of
January 30, 1933, as cheering crowds surged past him, for five long hours,
beneath the windows of the Chancellery in Berlin.

His political struggle had lasted 14 years. He
himself was 43, that is, physically and intellectually at the peak of his
powers. He had won over millions of Germans and organized them into Germany's
largest and most dynamic political party, a party girded by a human rampart of
hundreds of thousands of storm troopers, three fourths of them members of the
working class. He had been extremely shrewd. All but toying with his
adversaries, Hitler had, one after another, vanquished them all.

Standing there at the window, his arm raised
to the delirious throng, he must have known a feeling of triumph. But he seemed
almost torpid, absorbed, as if lost in another world.

It was a world far removed from the delirium
in the street, a world of 65 million citizens who loved him or hated him, but
all of whom, from that night on, had become his responsibility. And as he knew -
as almost all Germans knew at the of January 1933 - that this was a crushing, an
almost desperate responsibility.

Half a century later, few people understand
the crisis Germany faced at that time. Today, it's easy to assume that Germans
have always been well-fed and even plump. But the Germans Hitler inherited were
virtual skeletons.

During the preceding years, a score of
"democratic" governments had come and gone, often in utter confusion. Instead of
alleviating the people's misery, they had increased it, due to their own
instability: it was impossible for them to pursue any given plan for more than a
year or two. Germany had arrived at a dead end. In just a few years there had
been 224,000 suicides - a horrifying figure, bespeaking a state of misery even
more horrifying.

By the beginning of 1933, the misery of the
German people was virtually universal. At least six million unemployed and
hungry workers roamed aimlessly through the streets, receiving a pitiful
unemployment benefit of less than 42 marks per month. Many of those out of work
had families to feed, so that altogether some 20 million Germans, a third of the
country's population, were reduced to trying to survive on about 40 pfennigs per
person per day.

Unemployment benefits, moreover, were limited
to a period of six months. After that came only the meager misery allowance
dispensed by the welfare offices.

Notwithstanding the gross inadequacy of this
assistance, by trying to save the six million unemployed from total destruction,
even for just six months, both the state and local branches of the German
government saw themselves brought to ruin: in 1932 alone such aid had swallowed
up four billion marks, 57 percent of the total tax revenues of the federal
government and the regional states. A good many German municipalities were
bankrupt.

Those still lucky enough to have some kind of
job were not much better off. Workers and employees had taken a cut of 25
percent in their wages and salaries. Twenty-one percent of them were earning
between 100 and 250 marks per month; 69.2 percent of them, in January of 1933,
were being paid less than 1,200 marks annually. No more than about 100,000
Germans, it was estimated, were able to live without financial worries.

During the three years before Hitler came to
power, total earnings had fallen by more than half, from 23 billion marks to 11
billion. The average per capita income had dropped from 1,187 marks in 1929 to
627 marks, a scarcely tolerable level, in 1932. By January 1933, when Hitler
took office, 90 percent of the German people were destitute.

No one escaped the strangling effects of the
unemployment. The intellectuals were hit as hard as the working class. Of the
135,000 university graduates, 60 percent were without jobs. Only a tiny minority
was receiving unemployment benefits.

"The others," wrote one foreign observer,
Marcel Laloire (in his book New Germany), "are dependent on their parents or are
sleeping in flophouses. In the daytime they can be seen on the boulevards of
Berlin wearing signs on their backs to the effect that they will accept any kind
of work."

But there was no longer any kind of work.

The same drastic fall-off had hit Germany's
cottage industry, which comprised some four million workers. Its turnover had
declined 55 percent, with total sales plunging from 22 billion to 10 billion
marks.

Hardest hit of all were construction workers;
90 percent of them were unemployed.

Farmers, too, had been ruined, crushed by
losses amounting to 12 billion marks. Many had been forced to mortgage their
homes and their land. In 1932 just the interest on the loans they had incurred
due to the crash was equivalent to 20 percent of the value of the agricultural
production of the entire country. Those who were no longer able to meet the
interest payments saw their farms auctioned off in legal proceedings: in the
years 1931-1932, 17,157 farms - with a combined total area of 462,485 hectares -
were liquidated in this way.

The "democracy" of Germany's "Weimar Republic"
(1918 -1933) had proven utterly ineffective in addressing such flagrant wrongs
as this impoverishment of millions of farm workers, even though they were the
nation's most stable and hardest working citizens. Plundered, dispossessed,
abandoned: small wonder they heeded Hitler's call.

Their situation on January 30, 1933, was
tragic. Like the rest of Germany's working class, they had been betrayed by
their political leaders, reduced to the alternatives of miserable wages, paltry
and uncertain benefit payments, or the outright humiliation of begging.

Germany's industries, once renowned everywhere
in the world, were no longer prosperous, despite the millions of marks in
gratuities that the financial magnates felt obliged to pour into the coffers of
the parties in power before each election in order to secure their cooperation.
For 14 years the well-blinkered conservatives and Christian democrats of the
political center had been feeding at the trough just as greedily as their
adversaries of the left.

Thus, prior to 1933, the Social Democrats had
been generously bribed by Friedrich Flick, a super-capitalist businessman. With
him, as with all his like, it was a matter of carefully studied tactics. After
1945, his son, true to tradition, would continue to offer largess to the
Bundestag Socialists who had their hands out, and, in a roundabout way, to
similarly minded and equally greedy political parties abroad as well. The
benefactors, to be sure, made certain that their gifts bore fruit in lucrative
contracts and in cancelled fiscal obligations.

Nothing is given for nothing. In politics,
manacles are imposed in the form of money.

Even though they had thus assured themselves
of the willing cooperation of the politicians of the Weimar system's parties,
the titans of German capitalism had experienced only a succession of
catastrophes. The patchwork governments they backed, formed in the political
scramble by claim and compromise, were totally ineffective. They lurched from
one failure to another, with neither time for long-range planning nor the will
to confine themselves somehow to their proper function.

Time is required for the accomplishment of
anything important. It is only with time that great plans may be brought to
maturity and the competent men be found who are capable of carrying them out.
Not surprisingly, therefore, any economic plans drawn up amid all this shifting
for short-term political advantage were bound to fail.

Nor did the bribing of the political parties
make them any more capable of coping with the exactions ordered by the Treaty of
Versailles. France, in 1923, had effectively seized Germany by the throat with
her occupation of the Ruhr industrial region, and in six months had brought the
Weimar government to pitiable capitulation. But then, disunited, despising one
another, how could these political birds of passage have offered resistance? In
just a few months in 1923, seven German governments came and went in swift
succession. They had no choice but to submit to the humiliation of Allied
control, as well as to the separatist intrigues fomented by Poincarй's paid
agents.

The substantial tariffs imposed on the sale of
German goods abroad had sharply curtailed the nation's ability to export her
products. Under obligation to pay gigantic sums to their conquerors, the Germans
had paid out billions upon billions. Then, bled dry, they were forced to seek
recourse to enormous loans from abroad, from the United States in particular.

This indebtedness had completed their
destruction and, in 1929, precipitated Germany into a terrifying financial
crisis.

The big industrialists, for all their fat
bribes to the politicians, now found themselves impotent: their factories empty,
their workers now living as virtual vagrants, haggard of face, in the dismal
nearby working-class districts.

Thousands of German factories lay silent,
their smokestacks like a forest of dead trees. Many had gone under. Those which
survived were operating on a limited basis. Germany's gross industrial
production had fallen by half: from seven billion marks in 1920 to three and a
half billion in 1932.

The automobile industry provides a perfect
example. Germany's production in 1932 was proportionately only one twelfth that
of the United States, and only one fourth that of France: 682,376 cars in
Germany (one for each 100 inhabitants) as against 1,855,174 cars in France, even
though the latter's population was 20 million less than Germany's.

Germany had experienced a similar collapse in
exports. Her trade surplus had fallen from 2.872 billion marks in 1931 to only
667 millions in 1932 - nearly a 75 percent drop.

Overwhelmed by the cessation of payments and
the number of current accounts in the red, even Germany's central bank was
disintegrating. Harried by demands for repayment of the foreign loans, on the
day of Hitler's accession to power the Reichsbank had in all only 83 million
marks in foreign currency, 64 million of which had already been committed for
disbursement on the following day.

The astronomical foreign debt, an amount
exceeding that of the country's total exports for three years, was like a lead
weight on the back of every German. And there was no possibility of turning to
Germany's domestic financial resources for a solution: banking activities had
come virtually to a standstill. That left only taxes.

Unfortunately, tax revenues had also fallen
sharply. From nine billion marks in 1930, total revenue from taxes had fallen to
7.8 billion in 1931, and then to 6.65 billion in 1932 (with unemployment
payments alone taking four billion of that amount).

The financial debt burden of regional and
local authorities, amounting to billions, had likewise accumulated at a fearful
pace. Beset as they were by millions of citizens in need, the municipalities
alone owed 6.542 billion in 1928, an amount that had increased to 11.295 billion
by 1932. Of this total, 1.668 billion was owed in short-term loans.

Any hope of paying off these deficits with new
taxes was no longer even imaginable. Taxes had already been increased 45 percent
from 1925 to 1931. During the years 1931-1932, under Chancellor Brьning, a
Germany of unemployed workers and industrialists with half-dead factories had
been hit with 23 "emergency" decrees. This multiple overtaxing, moreover, had
proven to be completely useless, as the "International Bank of Payments" had
clearly foreseen. The agency confirmed in a statement that the tax burden in
Germany was already so enormous that it could not be further increased.

And so, in one pan of the financial scales: 19
billion in foreign debt plus the same amount in domestic debt. In the other, the
Reichsbank's 83 million marks in foreign currency. It was as if the average
German, owing his banker a debt of 6,000 marks, had less than 14 marks in his
pocket to pay it.

One inevitable consequence of this
ever-increasing misery and uncertainty about the future was an abrupt decline in
the birthrate. When your household savings are wiped out, and when you fear even
greater calamities in the days ahead, you do not risk adding to the number of
your dependents.

In those days the birth rate was a reliable
barometer of a country's prosperity. A child is a joy, unless you have nothing
but a crust of bread to put in its little hand. And that's just the way it was
with hundreds of thousands of German families in 1932.

In 1905, during the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm
II, the birthrate had been 33.4 per one thousand. In 1921 it was only 25.9, and
in 1924 it was down to 15.1. By the of 1932, it had fallen to just 14.7 per one
thousand.

It reached that figure, moreover, thanks only
to the higher birth rate in rural areas. In the fifty largest cities of the
Reich, there were more deaths than births. In 45 percent of working-class
families, there were no births at all in the latter years. The fall in the
birthrate was most pronounced in Berlin, which had less than one child per
family and only 9.1 births per one thousand. Deaths exceeded the number of new
births by 60 percent.

In contrast to the birthrate, politicians were
flourishing as never before - about the only thing in Germany that was in those
disastrous times. From 1919 to 1932, Germany had seen no less than 23
governments come and go, averaging a new one about every seven months. As any
sensible person realizes, such constant upheaval in a country's political
leadership negates its power and authority. No one would imagine that any
effective work could be carried out in a typical industrial enterprise if the
board of directors, the management, management methods, and key personnel were
all replaced every eight months. Failure would be certain.

Yet the Reich wasn't a factory of 100 or 200
workers, but a nation of 65 million citizens crushed under the imposed burdens
of the Treaty of Versailles, by industrial stagnation, by frightful
unemployment, and by a gut-wrenching misery shared by the entire people.

The many cabinet ministers who followed each
other in swift succession for thirteen years - due to petty parliamentary
squabbles, partisan demands, and personal ambitions - were unable to achieve
anything other than the certain collapse of their chaotic regime of rival
parties.

Germany's situation was further aggravated by
the unrestrained competition of the 25 regional states, which split up
governmental authority into units often in direct opposition to Berlin, thereby
incessantly sabotaging what limited power the central Reich government had at
that time.

The regional remnants of several centuries of
particularism were all fiercely jealous of their privileges. The Treaty of
Westphalia of 1648 had divided Germany into hundreds of Lilliputian states, most
of them musical comedy kingdoms whose petty monarchs tried to act like King
Louis XIV in courts complete with frills and reverential bows.

Even at the beginning of the First World War
(1914-1918), the German Reich included four distinct kingdoms (Prussia, Bavaria,
Wurttemberg and Saxony), each with its own sovereign, army, flag, titles of
nobility, and Great Cross in particolored enamel. In addition, there were six
grand duchies, five duchies, seven principalities, and three free cities.

The Bavarian clung fiercely to his lederhosen,
his steins of beer and his pipe. He took part in the war to preserve them. The
Saxon would gladly have had a go-around with the haughty Prussian. Each was
intent on his rights. And for all of them, faraway Berlin was a thorn in the
side.

Each regional state had its own separate
government with parliament, prime minister and cabinet. Altogether they
presented a lineup of 59 ministers who, added to the eleven Reich ministers and
the 42 senators of the Free Cities, gave the Germans a collection of 112
ministers, each of whom viewed the other with a jaundiced eye at best.

In addition, there were between two and three
thousand deputies - representing dozens of rival political parties - in the
legislatures of the Reich, the 22 states and the three Free Cities.

In the Reichstag elections of November 1932 -
held just months before Hitler become Chancellor - there were no less than 37
different political parties competing, with a total of 7,000 candidates (14 of
them by proxy), all of them frantically seeking a piece of the parliamentary
pie. It was most strange: the more discredited the party system became, the more
democratic champions there were to be seen gesturing and jostling in their
eagerness to climb aboard the gravy train.

To all appearances, the incumbents who had
been elected were there forever. They received fat salaries (a Reichstag deputy
got ten times what the average worker earned), and permitted themselves generous
supplementary incomes in the form of favors provided by interested clients. A
number of Socialist Reichstag deputies representing Berlin, for example, had
arranged for their wives to receive sumptuous fur coats from certain Jewish
financiers.

In a parliamentary democracy, mandates are
often very brief, and ministerial appointments even more so. The temptation is
strong to get it while you can.

Honest, dishonest, or piratical, these 112
cabinet ministers and thousands of legislative deputies had converted Germany
into a country that was ungovernable. It is incontestable that, by January of
1933, the "system" politicians had become completely discredited. Their
successors would inherit a country in economic, social and political ruins.

Today, more than half a century later, in an
era when so many are living in abundance, it is hard to believe that the Germany
of January 1933 had fallen so low. But for anyone who studies the archives and
the relevant documents of that time, there can be no doubt. Not a single figure
cited here is invented. By January 1933, Germany was down and bleeding to death.

All the previous chancellors who had
undertaken to get Germany back on her feet - including Brьning, Papen and
Schleicher - had failed. Only a genius or, as some believed, a madman, could
revive a nation that had fallen into such a state of complete disarray.

When President Franklin Roosevelt was called
upon at that same time to resolve a similar crisis in the United States, he had
at his disposal immense reserves of gold. Hitler, standing silently at the
chancellery window on that evening of January 30, 1933, knew that, on the
contrary, his nation's treasury was empty. No great benefactor would appear to
help him out. The elderly Reich President, Paul von Hindenburg, had given him a
work sheet of appalling figures of indebtedness.

Hitler knew that he would be starting from
zero. From less than zero. But he was also confident of his strength of will to
create Germany anew - politically, socially, financially, and economically. Now
legally and officially in power, he was sure that he could quickly convert that
cipher into a Germany more powerful than ever before.

What support did he have?

For one thing, he could count on the absolute
support of millions of fanatical disciples. And on that January evening, they
joyfully shared in the great thrill of victory. Some thirteen million Germans,
many of them former Socialists and Communists, had voted for his party.

But millions of Germans were still his
adversaries, disconcerted adversaries, to be sure, whom their own political
parties had betrayed, but who had still not been won over to National Socialism.

The two sides - those for and those against
Hitler - were very nearly equal in numbers. But whereas those on the left were
divided among themselves, Hitler's disciples were strongly united. And in one
thing above all, the National Socialists had an incomparable advantage: in their
convictions and in their total faith in a leader. Their highly organized and
well-disciplined party had conted with the worst kind of obstacles, and had
overcome them.

Hitler poses with close comrades shortly after
being named Chancellor on January 30, 1933.

While it enjoyed extraordinarily popular
support, the National Socialist movement had grown too fast, and problems
deriving from that lay in wait ahead. Thousands of visionaries with nebulous
dreams of domination, not to mention hotheads dreaming only of brawls and
revolution in perpetuity, had found their way into the National Socialist ranks.
The ambitious ones intended to rise to the top at any cost - and as quickly as
possible. Many of them were ill-prepared; some simply lacked morals. Many bitter
disappointments were in store for Hitler because of them.

Hitler sensed as much. He had ordered his
party to halt recruitment of new members, and even directed that the SA - the
huge civilian paramilitary force that had carried him to power - be reduced in
size. Indeed, by 1933 SA stormtroop membership had grown to the incredible
figure of 2,500,000 men, 25 times the size of the regular army, the Reichswehr.

It was due to such pressures that Hitler was
sometimes driven to rash action, contrary to his real desire or intent.
Sometimes this meant expulsions, the use of force or cases of intransigence,
even though his larger goal was to reunite the nation in peace, and accomplish
his political and social programs without useless clashes.

Hitler knew that he was playing with dynamite.
Still, it was his conviction that he was being driven not just by his National
Socialist movement, but by an inner, almost supernatural force. Whether one
called it Providence or Destiny, it was this force, he felt, that had carried
him to victory. His own force of character was such that it would yield to
nothing. For Hitler, it was a foregone conclusion that he would forge a new
Reich, a new world.

Hitler knew that the task he had set himself
would be immense and difficult to accomplish, that he would have to transform
Germany in practically every respect: the structure of the state, social law,
the constitution of society, the economy, civic spirit, culture, the very nature
of men's thinking. To accomplish his great goal, he would need to reestablish
the equilibrium of the social classes within the context of a regenerated
community, free his nation from foreign hegemony, and restructure its geographic
unity.

Task number one: he would have to restore work
and honor to the lives of six million unemployed. This was his immediate goal, a
task that everyone else thought impossible to achieve.

After he had once again closed the windows of
the chancellery, Hitler, with clenched fists and resolute mien, said simply:
"The great venture begins. The day of the Third Reich has come."

In just one year this "great venture" would be
in full swing, effecting a transformation from top to bottom in political,
social and economic life - indeed, in the German way of life itself.

II. The Unification of the State

"It will be the pride of my life," Hitler said
upon becoming Chancellor, "if I can say at the end of my days that I won back
the German worker and restored him to his rightful place in the Reich." He meant
that he intended not merely to put men back to work, but to make sure that the
worker acquired not just rights, but prestige as well, within the national
community.

The national community had long been the
proverbial wicked stepmother in its relationship with the German working man.
Class struggle had not been the exclusive initiative of the Marxists. It had
also been a fact of life for a privileged class, the capitalists, that sought to
dominate the working class. Thus the German worker, feeling himself treated like
a pariah, had often turned away from a fatherland that often seemed to consider
him merely an instrument of production.

In the eyes of the capitalists, money was the
sole active element in the flourishing of a country's economy. To Hitler's way
of thinking, that conception was radically wrong: capital, on the contrary, was
only an instrument. Work was the essential element: man's endeavor, man's honor,
blood, muscles and soul.

Hitler wanted not just to put an to the class
struggle, but to reestablish the priority of the human being, in justice and
respect, as the principal factor in production.

One could dispense with gold, and Hitler would
do just that. A dozen other things could be substituted for gold as a means of
stimulating industry, and Hitler would invent them. But as for work, it was the
indispensable foundation.

For the worker's trust in the fatherland to be
restored, he had to feel that from now on he was to be (and to be treated) as an
equal, instead of remaining a social inferior. Under the governments of the
so-called democratic parties of both the left and the right, he had remained an
inferior; for none of them had understood that in the hierarchy of national
values, work is the very essence of life; and matter, be it steel or gold, but a
tool.

The objective, then, was far greater than
merely sing six million unemployed back to work. It was to achieve a total
revolution.

"The people," Hitler declared, "were not put
here on earth for the sake of the economy, and the economy doesn't exist for the
sake of capital. On the contrary, capital is meant to serve the economy, and the
economy in turn to serve the people."

It would not be enough merely to reopen the
thousands of closed factories and fill them with workers. If the old concepts
still ruled, the workers would once again be nothing more than living machines,
faceless and interchangeable.

What was required was to reestablish that
moral equilibrium between the workers, human beings who shape raw materials, and
a useful and controlled capitalism, returned to its proper function as a tool.
This would mean changing an entire world, and it would take time.

As Hitler knew full well, such a revolution
could not be achieved while the central and regional governments continued in a
state of anarchy, seldom accomplishing anything solid, and sometimes running
amok. Nor could there be a revolution in society while dozens of parties and
thousands of deputies of every conceivable stripe pursued their selfish
interests under a political system that had thrashed about incoherently since
1919.

Restoring the effectiveness of Germany's
institutions on a nationwide basis was therefore an indispensable prerequisite
to any social rebirth.

"A fish rots from the head down," says a
Russian proverb. And it was at the head that political Germany, prior to Hitler,
was going bad. In the end, the "democratic" parties abdicated without even
defending themselves. In 1930, the aged President Marshall von Hindenburg used
his emergency powers under Article 48 of the Weimar constitution to enable a
succession of semi-dictators to rule by decree. But even they could accomplish
little.

These last chancellors - Herr Brьning, Herr
von Papen, and General Schleicher - were able to maintain rule only by executive
decree. Their authority, artificially sustained by misuse of Article 48, was
dependent on von Hindenburg and the camarilla advising him. Just how slim was
their level of popular support was shown in a particularly humiliating 1932
Reichstag "vote of confidence," in which more than 90 percent of the deputies
voted against him and his government.

Hitler's accession to power abruptly brought
an end to government impotence. As a condition of appointing him, however,
Hindenburg had demanded that the new chancellor be hemmed in like a prisoner in
his own government. In his first government, Hitler was obliged to name four
times as many conservative - or better, reactionary - ministers as his own men.
Just two members of his first cabinet were National Socialists.

Hindenburg's representatives were given the
mission of keeping Hitler on a leash. At the Reichstag session of March 24,
however, Hitler broke that leash, not with yet another executive decree (like
his immediate predecessors), but by obtaining a two-thirds parliamentary
majority for the "Enabling Act" that legally amed the constitution and gave him
sweeping plenary powers for a period of four years.

Four years in power to plan, create and make
decisions. Politically, it was a revolution: Hitler's first revolution. And
completely democratic, as had been every stage of his rise. His initial triumph
had come through the support of the electorate. Similarly, sweeping authority to
govern was granted him through a vote of more than two-thirds of the Reichtag's
deputies, elected by universal suffrage.

This was in accord with a basic principle of
Hitler's: no power without the freely given approval of the people. He used to
say: "If you can win mastery over the people only by imposing the power of the
state, you'd better figure on a nine o'clock curfew."

Nowhere in twentieth-century Europe had the
authority of a head of state ever been based on such overwhelming and freely
given national consent. Prior to Hitler, from 1919 to 1932, those governments
piously styling themselves democratic had usually come to power by meager
majorities, sometimes as low as 51 or 52 percent.

"I am not a dictator," Hitler had often
affirmed, "and I never will be. Democracy will be rigorously enforced by
National Socialism."

Authority does not mean tyranny. A tyrant is
someone who puts himself in power without the will of the people or against the
will of the people. A democrat is placed in power by the people. But democracy
is not limited to a single formula. It may be partisan or parliamentary. Or it
may be authoritarian. The important thing is that the people have wished it,
chosen it, established it in its given form.

That was the case with Hitler. He came to
power in an essentially democratic way. Whether one likes it or not, this fact
is undeniable. And after coming to power, his popular support measurably
increased from year to year. The more intelligent and honest of his enemies have
been obliged to admit this, men such as the declared anti-Nazi historian and
professor Joachim Fest, who wrote:

For Hitler was never interested in
establishing a mere tyranny. Sheer greed for power will not suffice as
explanation for his personality and energy - He was not born to be a mere
tyrant. He was fixated upon his mission of defending Europe and the Aryan race .
. . Never had he felt so dependent upon the masses as he did at this time, and
he watched their reactions with anxious concern.

These lines weren't written by Dr. Goebbels,
but by a stern critic of Hitler and his career. (J. Fest, Hitler, New York:
1974, p. 417.)

By February 28, 1933, less than a month after
his appointment as chancellor, Hitler had already managed to free himself of the
conservative ballast by which Hindenburg had thought to weigh him down. The
Reichstag fire of the previous evening prompted the elderly President to approve
a new emergency law "For the Protection of the People and the State," which
considerably increased the powers of the executive.

Hitler meant, however, to obtain more than
just concessions ruefully granted by a pliable old man: he sought plenary powers
legally accorded him by the nation's supreme democratic institution, the
Reichstag. Hitler prepared his coup with the skill, the patience, and the
astuteness for which he is legendary. "He possessed," historian Fest later
wrote, "an intelligence that included above all a sure sense of the rhythm to be
observed in the making of decisions."

Hitler, von Hinderburg, and von Papen, in the
Garrison church at the solemn "Day of Potsdam" ceremony.

At first, Hitler carefully cultivated
Hindenburg, the elderly First World War Feldmarschall who was fond of tradition.
Accordingly, Hitler arranged a solemn ceremony in Hindenburg's honor in Potsdam,
historic residence of the Prussian kings. This masterpiece of majesty, beauty,
tradition and piety took place in Potsdam's Garrison Church on March 21, 1933,
just days before the Reichstag was to reconvene.

Hindenburg had served as an army officer for
half a century. So that the old soldier might be reunited with his comrades,
Hitler had arranged for veterans from all the wars in which Hindenburg had
served to be present on this solemn occasion. From all around the country they
came: veterans from the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 (62 years before), from
the war of 1866 against the Austrian empire (67 years before), and even from the
war of 1864 against Denmark (69 years before!). For someone on the retirement
list of 1911, it must have been a heartwarming occasion to be reunited again
with comrades from so long ago.

With deference and apparent humility, and
attired in formal dress for the occasion, Hitler bowed his head before the old
man. In the stately church where the ceremony took place, Hitler had arranged
that the chair of the former Kaiser, Wilhelm II, which had been unoccupied for
14 years, remained empty, so that Hindenburg could halt before it and make his
salute, his marshal's baton raised, as if the monarch were still there.

Hitler also quietly led Hindenburg down into
the church crypt, to place wreaths on the tombs of his old master, Kaiser
Wilhelm I, and of Frederick the Great. The President's old eyes were rimmed with
tears.

On that 21st day of March at Potsdam, the
octogenarian President relived the glorious past of the German monarchy. This
somber homage was his hour supreme. Hindenburg had always been a loyal servant
of the Emperor, and this reminder of his former sovereign, and of the great days
of his own long career, deeply moved him. Hitler was the first chancellor since
the defeat of 1918 to so honor the tradition of Prussia and Germany. The young
revolutionary chancellor had touched his heart.

A month and a half earlier, Hindenburg had
commissioned Papen, Hugenberg, and Neurath and other conservative ministers to
pinch in Hitler "until he hollered." Now that was over. Hitler had won him over:
in front of an empty armchair and before the tombs of Prussia's greatest kings.

A year and a half later, as he lay dying, the
old Feldmarschall would believe that he was back in the time of Hohenzollern
dynasty, and in his delirium would address Hitler as "Majesty."

This "Day of Potsdam" ceremony also won Hitler
new support from among the country's many monarchists, giving them the
impression that he has not altogether insensitive to the idea of restoring the
monarchy. But the new chancellor's temporary prudence was calculated with
precision.

"There is no need to destroy the existing
institutions," Hitler assured, "until there is something better to put in their
place."

He still had need of men like von Papen and
other ruling-class troglodytes. He kept them at his side as he drove them around
Potsdam on that historic day, the festive city bedecked not only with swastika
banners but equally with the black-white-and-red flags of the Second Reich,
resurrected for the occasion. Brass bands paraded around, blaring heroic marches
calculated to make their old chests swell. Here too, the scarcely camouflaged
aversion to the parvenu was softened. Hitler had tamed the aristocrats, both
born and moneyed. They would no longer stand in his way.

But it was above all Germany's army - the
Reichswehr - that was the object of Hitler's most ardent courtship. In 1933, he
desperately needed the army's support. The generals had tolerated his rise to
power with reluctance. A corporal in the chancellory seemed intolerable to the
haughty, monocled generals. Some ambitiously sought to supervise the nation's
political machinery.

They had not been consulted when Hitler was
named Chancellor on January 30. The old Feldmarschall had even sternly sent away
General von Hammerstein-Equord, who had come to tell Hindenburg of the General
Staff's vote of disapproval. In the weeks since, the generals had barely
tolerated the young outsider.

Keenly aware that a coup d'йtat by this proud
military caste could instantly sweep him and his party away, along with all his
plans for the future, Hitler knew that he must proceed cleverly against the
imperious generals. The Reichswehr was therefore accorded a position of honor at
Potsdam. At the entry walkway to the royal palace, Reichswehr troops presented
arms on one side, while a line of SA stormtroopers faced them on the other side.
Unifying conservative military traditions of duty and honor with a revolutionary
new force, together they formed the honor guard that symbolized a Germany
restored to harmony.

The young Chancellor greets the aging
President at the "Day of Potsdam" ceremony, March 21, 1933.

As for the generals, their tunics gleaming
with decorations and their chests thrown out, they once again marched behind
their old commander, a heroic retinue worthy of a great Germanic chieftain. At
last, after fourteen years of disregard under the democratic Weimar Republic,
they once again bathed in the golden light of martial glory. Corporal Hitler was
perhaps not as contemptible as they had thought.

The ex-corporal, standing at attention in top
hat and formal dress suit, let them have their day of glory at Potsdam. He knew
enough to let them bask in the limelight.

Hitler had won his armistice.

To reach the people, Hitler and Dr. Goebbels
had quickly taken control of the nation's radio, from which they had for so long
been barred (and which their adversaries had put to only mediocre use). Within a
few weeks, they had succeeded in making radio their most effective tool. Each of
Hitler's major speeches was broadcast to the nation with a hitherto unknown
power.

Radio also brought the spectacle of Potsdam to
the people. Goebbels set up his microphones everywhere: in front of Hindenburg,
behind Hindenburg, in the royal crypt, close to the military bands, and even on
the rooftops of houses (where the announcers risked their necks to cover the
pageantry). One of them was a young National Socialist Reichstag deputy named
Baldur von Schirach, who in 1946 would find himself in the dock before the
vengeful Allied judges of the Nuremberg Tribunal.

All of Germany was on the edge of its seat as
it listened for hours to the exciting coverage of the event. Millions of Germans
thrilled to once again hear the stirring old melodies, and to closely follow
Hindenburg's every move, almost as if they were there.

During the dark days of the recent past, the
venerated old warrior had represented tradition and hope. Now, thanks to
Hitler's careful planning and management of this occasion, the ancient soldier
embodied the promise of great national renewal. It was, as historian Fest has
observed, "the feast of reconciliation gorgeously presented . . . That day at
Potsdam truly proved to be a turning point in history . . . Many government
officials, army officers, lawyers and judges, many members of the nationalistic
bourgeoisie who had distrusted Hitler on rational grounds, abandoned their stand
. . . " (J. Fest, Hitler, New York: 1974, p. 405.)

Potsdam was a grandiose theatrical stage on
which all had played their parts, even - by their very absence - the lukewarm
and Hitler's enemies on the left.

Glued to their radio sets, all Germany had
participated in the spectacle, at first fascinated, and then caught up in the
emotion of the event. The next day, Berlin newspapers declared: "National
enthusiasm swept over Germany yesterday like a great storm."

"A strange mixture of tactician and
visionary," Joachim Fest would later write, sizing up this extraordinary stage
manager. For Hitler had led field marshals, generals, and other dignitaries,
none of them fools, through his drill paces as though they had been so many
animated tin soldiers. But Hitler's plans exted far beyond winning over the Old
Guard.

In order to establish his new state in
definitive form, Hitler now proposed to obtain the official ratification of the
Reichstag, which would establish his authority to govern as a virtual dictator
for a period of several years.

To gain such plenary powers lawfully, the
German constitution had to be amed, and this would require approval by two
thirds of the parliament's members.

Hitler's party, having won 17,300,000 votes in
the elections of March 5, 1933, for the new Reichstag, held a total of 288 seats
- making it by far the largest single party. His conservative ally in the
temporary partnership, Hugenberg's German National People's Party (DNVP), had
captured 4,750,000 votes and held another 52 seats, giving the coalition a total
of 340 deputies.

After deducting the 81 "empty" Communist
seats, the opposition now mustered just 226 members: 120 Social Democrats, 92
(Catholic) Center and BVP deputies, and 14 others.

Although his coalition held a majority of
seats, to alter the constitution Hitler needed a two thirds majority - which
meant 36 additional votes.

At first sight, this goal seemed almost
impossible. For more than a decade, the Catholic Center and Bavarian People's
parties had been outspoken critics of Hitler and his National Socialist
movement, unhesitatingly using religion as a partisan political weapon, and even
denying religious burial to Catholic National Socialists murdered by Communist
killers.

Hitler, with the assistance of Gцring (who was
now president of the new Reichstag), would now have to win over that clerical
flock. Center party leader Monsignor Kaas, a squat and pudgy prelate who found
the collecting of votes to be more satisfying than the guidance of souls, was
flattered and courted by Hitler, who dangled before him the promise of a
rapprochement between the state and the Catholic Church, an earnest promise that
Hitler would make good on the following summer. The beguiled prelate may have
believed that he was going to lead errant sheep back to the fold. In any case,
Hitler succeeded in persuading and seducing the Center party. Some deputies of
the smaller opposition parties also yielded.

When it came time to vote, Hitler was granted
plenary powers with a sweeping majority of 441 votes to 94: he had won not just
two thirds, but 82.44 percent of the assembly's votes. This "Enabling Act"
granted Hitler for four years virtually absolute authority over the legislative
as well as the executive affairs of the government.

The five paragraphs of this "Law for the
Alleviation of the Misery of the People and the Nation" were brief and to the
point:

1. Laws may be promulgated by the Reich
government apart from the procedures provided for by the Constitution . . .

2. Laws promulgated by the Reich government
may deviate from the Constitution provided they do not change the position of
the Reichstag or of the Reichsrat. The powers of the Reich President are not
changed.

3. Laws promulgated by the Reich government
will be prepared by the Chancellor and published in the "Official Journal."
Unless otherwise specified, they become effective on the day following
publication . . .

4. Treaties concluded by the Reich with
foreign states that concern matters of national legislation do not require
ratification by the legislative bodies. The Reich government is empowered to
issue the regulations necessary for their execution.

5. This law becomes effective on the day of
publication, and remains valid until April 1, 1937. It also becomes invalid if
the present government is replaced by another.

Berlin, March 24, 1933

Von Hindenburg, Hitler, Frick, von Neurath,
Krosigk

Thus, a parliamentary democracy, exercising
its constitutional powers, had legally established an authoritarian national
state. Next, a solution was needed to problem of the horde of the competing
regional, state and local parliaments, jurisdictions and authorities. For the
most part, these authorities were virtual nullities, and there was no love lost
between them. For fourteen years, though, they had acted together whenever a
opportunity presented itself to thwart the central government in Berlin.

It was inconceivable that a strong government
such as the one Hitler had just established could function effectively with
thousands of second-level politicians carping and questioning his every move.
Anyway, Germans had in fact become sick and tired of the squandering of
authority, the perpetual squabbling, the pettiness, discord, and the anarchy for
which, in the final analysis, it was the people who paid.

"It is a fact," French historian
Bйnoist-Mйchin later observed, "that the unification of the states and the Reich
answered one of the most profound aspirations of the German people. They had
enough of being torn apart by the constant threats of secession of the
provincial governments. For centuries they had dreamed of being part of a single
community." (Histoire de l'Armйe Allemande, vol. III, p. 117.)

It seemed a simple enough task, because public
opinion demanded the abolition of the administrative mess. But such a reform
would necessarily bruise the vanity of thousands and collide head-on with many
local special interests.

A man who is a council president or a
minister, even if only of a small state, does not easily resign himself to being
no more than a private citizen, to once again becoming, let us say, a provincial
lawyer scampering to the court house with coattails flying. The 2,400
legislative deputies would also be bitter about losing the good life they had
come to know and expect. Gone the prestige, the deference, the awards, the
vacation trips at public expense, the discreet gratuities! Who among us does not
make a wry face when swallowing bitter medicine? But it had to be, for Hitler
had his eyes fixed on the national goal: a unified nation.

That did not mean, of course, that in
eliminating the regional administrations Hitler had any desire to do away with
the distinctive identities of the nation's various provinces. On the contrary,
he believed that a nation's life ought never to be monopolized by its capital
city, but should rather be nourished and constantly renewed by the blooming of
dozens of centers of culture in regions rich in varied manners, mores and
legacies of their past.

He believed that the nation was the harmonious
conjunction of these profound and original variations, and that a state
conscious of its real powers ought to promote such variety, not smother it.

The dispersion of political power had not
favored such a variety, but had, on the contrary, diminished it, depriving it of
the cohesion a large community brings. The Reich's 25 separate administrative
entities, rivals of the central government and often of each other, were a
source of disorder. A nation must consist of regions that know and esteem each
other, and which gain mutual enrichment from their interlinking, rather than
each withdrawing into a culture that is strangled by an exclusive and
restrictive provincialism. And only a strong central authority could insure the
flowering of all the various regions within a single collective entity. In sum,
what Hitler intended was that each region should bring its share of original
culture to the totality of a German Reich that had put an to so many fractious
administrations.

From 1871 to 1933, Germany's various national
governments had come up against this obstacle of political particularism. Even
so gifted a leader as Bismarck had not been able to overcome this persistent
problem. And now, where the leaders of both the Second Reich and the Weimar
Republic had failed, or had not dared to take the risk, Hitler, in a few months,
was going to convert this long-standing division and discord into potent and
effective unity.

Hitler had scarcely moved into his office
overlooking the chancellery garden, where squirrels cracked nuts in the trees
and at times even leaped into the building itself, when he drew up a law to
unify the Reich's many lands.

The first of the states that would be made to
toe the line was Bavaria, which up to that point had been a bulwark of
belligerent separatism and hidebound monarchists.

Hitler's intentions were no sooner known than
several Bavarian ministers devised a plan to resurrect from retirement that old
fogy, the ex-Prince Ruprecht, heir to Bavaria's Wittelsbach throne, who in
November 1923, then as an ordinary private citizen, had, with a good deal of
boasting, helped block Hitler's ill-fated putsch. Now the new chancellor
responded to their little plot with sudden and crushing force, bringing the
Bavarian state administration to heel in a single night. The next morning,
Lieutenant General von Epp was named Reich Commissioner in Munich.

Thereafter, almost all the other regional
states rapidly collapsed, like a house of cards.

The most difficult state to master was
Prussia, an enormous bastion (a third of Germany) stretching across the heart of
the country. Prussia truly constituted a state within the state, a special
government. In 1931 its Socialist government had held Reich Chancellor Brьning
completely in check. His humiliating defeat came notwithstanding their party's
crushing defeat in the Prussian elections a short time earlier at the hands of
Hitler's candidates. Chancellor von Papen found that he, too, had to come to
grips with Prussia, which was nearly as strong as the central government.

After he became Chancellor, Hitler was obliged
for a time - because Hindenburg demanded it - to let von Papen remain as Reich
Commissioner of Prussia; and it was only with great effort on his part that
Hitler managed to have Gцring named as von Papen's Minister of the Interior in
Prussia. The autonomy of the Prussian government, more than any other, had to be
liquidated: otherwise, the central government would remain subject at any moment
to embarrassment and hindrance in the city that was the capital of both Prussia
and the Reich. The matter was particularly delicate because von Papen, the
aristocrat, had to remain as Reich Commissioner of Prussia. To remove him would
risk disapproval and even countermeasures by President von Hindenburg.

Hitler at that point surpassed himself in
versatility and guile. By dint of flattery and persuasion, within a month von
Papen let himself be gently shoved out the door. Hitler all but dictated for him
the text of his letter of resignation of April 7, 1933, in which the Vice
Chancellor acknowledged that the Law on the Unification of the Lands of the
Reich "was a legal edifice destined to be of great historic importance in the
development of the German Reich." He further recognized that "the dualism
existing between the Reich and Prussia" had to come to an. In his letter he even
compared Hitler to Prince Otto von Bismarck.

Although von Papen was being nudged out,
Hitler soothed his wounded pride by publicly declaring that he never would have
been able to carry out the political reunification of the Reich alone; that the
great architect of the achievement had been von Papen.

Without turning a hair, Hitler also wrote to
Feldmarschall von Hindenburg:

In assuming the functions of Reich
Commissioner in Prussia during the difficult period following the 30th of
January, Herr von Papen has deserved very great credit for contributing so
strongly to the working out of a strict coordination between the policies of the
Reich and those of the regional states. His collaboration with the cabinet of
the Reich, to which he will henceforth be able to devote himself completely,
will be of priceless assistance to me. The feelings I have for him are such that
I rejoice in having the benefit of his cooperation, which will be of inestimable
value to me.

For his part the aged field marshal responded
to this small masterpiece of hypocrisy with one of his own, this one addressed
to von Papen:

Dear Herr von Papen,

I have just accepted your request that you be
relieved of your duties as Reich commissioner of Prussia. I take this
opportunity to thank you, in the name of the Reich and in my own name, for the
eminent service you have rendered the nation by eliminating the dualism existing
between the Reich and Prussia, and by imposing the idea of a common political
direction of the Reich and the regional states. I have learned with satisfaction
that you will henceforth be able to devote all your energies to the government
of the Reich.

With feelings of sincere comradeship, I remain
your devoted

von Hindenburg, President of the Reich
Ex-Chancellor von Papen thus lost the only effective power he still held.
Although he remained a member of the inner circle of Hitler's government (but
for how long?), he was now really little more than a willing stooge.

Hitler immediately named himself Statthalter
of Prussia, and Gцring as Minister President, thus bringing the greatest German
state under firm control.

One after another, the regional states were
shorn of their sovereignty. The process was staged like a ballet.

Act One: Regional parliamentary power is
transferred smoothly to men who had Hitler's confidence.

Act Two: Each man announces acceptance of the
"Law of Unification."

Act Three: Each regional parliament proclaims
the of its own state autonomy and sovereignty.

Act Four: In each region, Hitler appoints
Reich Commissioner (or Statthalter), who is charged with carrying out the
Chancellor's political directives.

In the Grand Duchies of Baden and Saxony there
were a few verbal skirmishes, but these were quickly squelched. In the Free City
of Hamburg (population a million and a half), its leaders grumbled a bit for
form's sake, but only a few hours of negotiations were required to make them see
the light. In just a few weeks, the entire process was accomplished.

Making use of the sweeping powers granted him
by the Reichstag's overwhelming vote of approval on March 23, 1933, within a few
months Hitler succeeded in transforming the faltering Reich government into a
formidable instrument of action. Thanks to that mandate, and several special
decrees signed by the President, he was thus able constitutionally to eliminate
the rival authorities of numerous state governments and parliaments.

"It all went much faster than we had dared
hope," Goebbels commented with delight, and a shade of sarcasm.

Precisely one year after Hitler had become
Chancellor, a "Law for the Rebuilding of the Reich" spelled out the full extent
of the change:

1. Representation of the regional states is
abolished.

2. (a) The sovereign rights of the regional
states are transferred to the government of the Reich.

(b) The governments of the regional states are
subject to the government of the Reich.

3. The governors [Statthalter] are subject to
the authority of the Reich Minister of the Interior.

4. The government of the Reich may modify the
constitutional rights of the regional states.

5. The Minister of the Interior will issue the
legal and administrative decrees necessary for the implementation of this law.

6. This law will become effective on the day
of its official publication.

Berlin, January 30, 1934

Von Hindenburg, Hitler, Frick

Bismarck, the "Iron Chancellor," could never
have dreamed of political reunification on such an authoritarian and
hierarchical basis. But Hitler had tried, and succeeded. Germany had now
attained a level of concentrated power and authority more profound than any ever
achieved in her history. And it had all been accomplished, moreover, by
democratic means.

After 1945 the explanation that was routinely
offered for all this was that the Germans had lost their heads. Whatever the
case, it is a historical fact that they acted of their own free will. Far from
being resigned, they were enthusiastic. "For the first time since the last days
of the monarchy," historian Joachim Fest has conceded, "the majority of the
Germans now had the feeling that they could identify with the state."

But what of the political parties?

Although Hitler had succeeded in transforming
the tens of millions of Bavarians, Saxons, Prussians and residents of Hamburg
into citizens of one and the same Reich, under a single national administration,
and even though the anthill of petty and more or less separatist states had been
leveled, there still remained in Germany the contentious and divisive political
parties. They had been discredited, to be sure, but the hearty ambitions of
impenitent politicians could reawaken to erode the foundations of the new state.

The party leaders were scarcely in a position
to protest. On the preceding 23rd of March they themselves had overwhelmingly
approved the fateful "Enabling Act." Now, with their wings clipped and their
prerogatives taken away, they no longer served any useful purpose. They were not
merely superfluous, they had become an encumbrance.

How would Hitler get rid of them?

III. Liquidation of the Parties

On the day in March when the deputies of the
Weimar Republic voted to relinquish their power, Hitler, standing before them in
their own parliamentary bailiwick, utterly poised in his brown shirt, did not
spare them. "It is for you, gentlemen of the Reichstag," he declared, "to decide
between war and peace."

But how, one might ask, could they take up the
fight now, when they had in fact already given up the fight years earlier?

At this point, Hitler was no longer even
willing to let the last recalcitrant Reichstag deputies, the Social Democrats -
by now reduced to representing a mere 17.55 percent of the nation's voters -
assume the martyred pose of a persecuted fringe group.

"You talk about persecution!" he thundered in
an impromptu response to an address by the Social Democratic speaker. "I think
that there are only a few of us [in our party] here who did not have to suffer
persecutions in prison from your side . . . You seem to have totally forgotten
that for years our shirts were ripped off our backs because you did not like the
color . . . We have outgrown your persecutions!"

"In those days," he scathingly continued, "our
newspapers were banned and banned and again banned, our meetings were forbidden,
and we were forbidden to speak, I was forbidden to speak, for years on. And now
you say that criticism is salutary!"

The shoe was now on the other foot.

"From now on we National Socialists will make
it possible for the German worker to attain what he is able to demand and insist
on. We National Socialists will be his intercessors. You, gentlemen, are no
longer needed . . . And don't confound us with the bourgeois world. You think
that your star may rise again. Gentlemen, Germany's star will rise and yours
will sink . . . In the life of nations, that which is rotten, old and feeble
passes and does not return."

Finally, Hitler dismissed these bankrupt
Socialists with the words: "I can only tell you: I do not want your votes!
Germany shall be free, but not through you!"

(Quoted in: J. Fest, Hitler, New York: 1974,
p. 408 f.)

Within just half a year, Hitler would succeed
in liquidating all these now passй and essentially irrelevant political parties.
Not just the Socialist Party, already rejected by the people themselves, but all
the other conniving party politicians as well: the conservatives, a century
behind the times, the myopic nationalists, and the boastful Catholic centrists -
all of them agents and collaborators in Germany's road to ruin between 1919 to
1933.

All of these parties had clearly lost their
drive. That some voters still supported them in early 1933, even after Hitler
had become Chancellor, was largely out of habit. Their impetus was gone. The
parties of the Weimar system had botched everything and let the nation go to
ruin. Germany's collapse, her six million unemployed, the widespread hunger, the
demoralization of an entire people: all this was their doing. Now that a strong
leader with broad national support had taken their place, what could they do? As
Joachim Fest would later write, they were "like a spider web with which one
hoped to catch eagles."

Hitler's millions of followers had
rediscovered the primal strength of rough, uncitified man, of a time when men
still had backbone. Theirs was a Dionysian power, one that they would conserve
for the great challenges to come: it wouldn't be needed against the political
parties. A mere shrug of the shoulders, and those would fall apart.

It was fitting that the first to crumble was
the Social Democratic party (SPD). It went out with a whimper.

It had still shown some guts on March 23, when
its Reichstag deputies refused to vote Hitler plenary powers. After 1945 the
Socialist party would glory in that deed, while at the same time taking care not
to add that less than two months later, on May 17, the Social Democratic
deputies decided to approve Hitler's major address to the Reichstag on foreign
policy. It was as if they felt themselves swept along by the surge of popular
support for Hitler, even within the ranks of their own party. Along with the
National Socialist deputies, they voiced their approval for Hitler's policy.

From his perch as Reichstag president, Gцring
turned to glance at the turncoats, and commented: "The world has seen that the
German people are united where their destiny is at stake."

Now that the Social Democratic leadership,
which for so long had railed against Hitler, decided to back him in the
Reichstag, the party's rank and file could hardly be expected to oppose him.
That day marked the of the Social Democratic party's credibility. Following the
example of their own party leadership, the large SPD electorate would,
understandably, now also vote for Hitler.

After this act of capitulation, it was now
child's play for Hitler to liquidate the Social Democratic party. Four weeks
later, on June 22, it was officially dissolved. "No one," Fest has observed,
"expected any show of resistance on the part of the SPD." The party's initials
could more fittingly have been RIP: resquiescat in pace.

The peace would be total. Apart from a few
leftist members of the Reichstag who went into exile and led isolated and
unproductive lives abroad, the now former Socialist deputies continued, each
month, to pocket the pensions that Hitler had allowed them. They walked about
unmolested on the streets of Berlin. A number of them, some with great success,
even threw in their lot with the National Socialists.

Gustav Noske, the lumberjack who became
defense minister - and the most valiant defender of the embattled republic in
the tumultuous months immediately following the collapse of 1918 - acknowledged
honestly in 1944, when the Third Reich was already rapidly breaking down, that
the great majority of the German people still remained true to Hitler because of
the social renewal he had brought to the working class.

After the "Reds," the "Whites" had their turn.
Of the two dozen or so political parties that existed in Germany in 1932-1933, a
number of the smaller ones quietly dissolved themselves without anyone even
noticing their demise. They had been created for no reason other than to aid the
political ambitions of their founders. But now, with no more Reichstag seats in
sight, there was no further point in trying to recruit voters.

The parties of the right, formerly important
but now abandoned by their voters, were conscious of the futility of exping any
further effort or money to subsist artificially. Now lacking any popular
support, one after another they, too, voluntarily disbanded. The "German
National People's Party," abandoned by its bourgeois supporters, was the first
to give up the ghost. A few days later, on June 28, the "State Party" did the
same. The "Bavarian People's Party" and the "German People's Party" took the
same step on July 4.

Of all the conservative mossbacks, the most
difficult to get rid of was Alfred Hugenberg, the media titan who was still a
minister in Hitler's cabinet. Nazis rather disrespectfully called him "the old
porker in the beet patch." Hugenberg ultimately lost his cabinet post because he
overplayed the role of zealous nationalist at a conference in London in June
1933, making a claim, premature to say the least, for the return to Germany of
her colonies, and calling for German economic expansion into the Ukraine! Hitler
regarded this as totally inopportune, particularly at a time when he was making
every effort to reassure his skeptics and critics abroad. After this diplomatic
blunder, Hugenberg had no choice but to resign. Thus departed the once powerful
capitalist who had vowed, on January 30, to politically muzzle the newly named
Chancellor.

His dismissal was a double success for Hitler:
by disavowing an international troublemaker, he reassured those outside the
Germany who had been alarmed by Hugenberg's ill-chosen statements; and he rid
himself of a political liability whose diplomatic gaffe had cost him whatever
standing he had in von Hindenburg's esteem.

The last political factor to go was the
clerico-bourgeois "Center" party. Following its vote on March 23 to give Hitler
plenary powers, the Center had forfeited all credibility as an opposition party.
Its following dwindled away in indifference. After all, if Center leader
Monsignor Kaas decided to side with the Führer in the Reichstag, why shouldn't
the party's rank and file do likewise?

Meanwhile, diplomatic negotiations with the
Vatican on a concordat to regulate relations between the German state and the
Catholic church were close to a favorable conclusion. In this effort, perhaps
more than any other, Hitler manifested patience, cunning, and tact. He needed
political peace with the Church, at least until, with the help of the hierarchy,
he could count completely on the support of Germany's many Catholics.

By voting for Hitler in the Reichstag, Center
leader Kaas and his pious clerics had unsuspectingly fallen into a trap. On July
5, 1933, they declared themselves politically neutral and dissolved themselves
as a party.

As a contemporary observer noted: "All the
things being abolished no longer concerned people very much." With regard to the
rapid demise of the political parties and the other political forces of both the
right and left, Joachim Fest aptly commented: "If anything could have
demonstrated the sapped vitality of the Weimar Republic, it was the ease with
which the institutions that had sustained it let themselves be overwhelmed."
(Quoted in: J. Fest, Hitler, New York: 1974, p. 415.)

To abolish the political parties and swallow
up their once vast networks of voters took only a scant half year, and with
little damage to life or limb. Hitler had succeeded in winning over or at least
neutralizing those who had so recently reviled and jeered him. No one was more
astonished at the rapidity with which the political parties had succumbed than
Hitler himself. "One would never have thought so miserable a collapse possible,"
he remarked in July 1933, after having thrown the last shovelful of dirt on the
graves of the Weimar Republic's once mighty parties.

(J. Fest, Hitler, p. 415.)

IV. Unification of the Labor Unions

Only one significant political factor still
remained: the Marxist trade unions. For many years they had represented one of
the country's most potent forces. Although nominally only an economic factor,
they had also been a major political factor, furnishing the Communists with
their militants and the Social Democrats with the bulk of their voters.

For fifteen years they had been a constant and
fanatical pressure group, stirring up turmoil in the streets and formulating
ever greater demands. The unions had long provided the Left with large amounts
of money, funds that were continually replenished by the contributions of
millions of union members.

Here again, well before the collapse of
party-ridden Weimar Republic, disillusion with the unions had become widespread
among the working masses. They were starving. The hundreds of Socialist and
Communist deputies stood idly by, impotent to provide any meaningful help to the
desperate proletariat.

Their leaders had no proposals to remedy, even
partially, the great distress of the people; no plans for large-scale public
works, no industrial restructuring, no search for markets abroad.

Moreover, they offered no energetic resistance
to the pillaging by foreign countries of the Reich's last financial resources:
this a consequence of the Treaty of Versailles that the German Socialists had
voted to ratify in June of 1919, and which they had never since had the courage
effectively to oppose.

The few palliative modifications that had been
won, wrested with great difficulty from the rapacious Allies, had been achieved
by Gustav Stresemann, the conservative foreign affairs minister. Although he
enjoyed little or no support, even from the politicians, Stresemann fought
stubbornly, in spite of faltering health, to liberate the Reich. Enduring
fainting fits, and with a goiter, growing ever more enormous, knotted around his
neck like a boa constrictor, Stresemann, even as he was dying, was the only
Weimar leader who had seriously attempted to pry away the foreign talons from
the flesh of the German people.

In 1930, 1931 and 1932, German workers had
watched the disaster grow: the number of unemployed rose from two million to
three, to four, to five, then to six million. At the same time, unemployment
benefits fell lower and lower, finally to disappear completely. Everywhere one
saw dejection and privation: emaciated mothers, children wasting away in sordid
lodgings, and thousands of beggars in long sad lines.

The failure, or incapacity, of the leftist
leaders to act, not to mention their insensitivity, had stupefied the working
class. Of what use were such leaders with their empty heads and empty hearts -
and, often enough, full pockets?

Well before January 30, thousands of workers
had already joined up with Hitler's dynamic formations, which were always hard
at it where they were most needed. Many joined the National Socialists when they
went on strike. Hitler, himself a former worker and a plain man like themselves,
was determined to eliminate unemployment root and branch. He wanted not merely
to defend the laborer's right to work, but to make his calling one of honor, to
insure him respect and to integrate him fully into a living community of all the
Germans, who had been divided class against class.

In January 1933, Hitler's victorious troops
were already largely proletarian in character, including numerous hardfisted
street brawlers, many unemployed, who no longer counted economically or
socially.

Meanwhile, membership in the Marxist labor
unions had fallen off enormously: among thirteen million socialist and Communist
voters in 1932, no more than five million were union members. Indifference and
discouragement had reached such levels that many members no longer paid their
union dues. Many increasingly dispirited Marxist leaders began to wonder if
perhaps the millions of deserters were the ones who saw things clearly. Soon
they wouldn't wonder any longer.

Even before Hitler won Reichstag backing for
his "Enabling Act," Germany's giant labor union federation, the ADGB, had begun
to rally to the National Socialist cause. As historian Joachim Fest
acknowledged: "On March 20, the labor federation's executive committee addressed
a kind of declaration of loyalty to Hitler." (J. Fest, Hitler, p. 413.)

Hitler than took a bold and clever step. The
unions had always clamored to have the First of May recognized as a worker's
holiday, but the Weimar Republic had never acceded to their request. Hitler,
never missing an opportunity, grasped this one with both hands. He did more than
grant this reasonable demand: he proclaimed the First of May a national holiday.

Just as the Socialist party had gone from a
vote in the Reichstag against Hitler (March 23, 1933) to a vote of support (May
17, 1933), so did the union leaders make a 180-degree turn within weeks. At one
stroke, Hitler granted to the union what they had vainly asked of every previous
government: a holiday celebrated by the entire nation. He announced that in
order to honor Labor, he would organize the biggest meeting in Germany's history
on the First of May at Tempelhof airfield in Berlin. Caught unprepared, but on
the whole very pleased to take advantage of the situation by throwing in their
lot with National Socialism and, what is more, to take part in a mass
demonstration the like of which even Marxist workers could scarcely imagine, the
union leadership called upon their leftist rank and file to join, with banners
flying, the mass meetings held that May Day across Germany, and to acclaim
Hitler.

I myself attended the memorable meeting at the
Tempelhof field in 1933. By nine o'clock that morning, giant columns, some of
workers, others of youth groups, marching in cadence down the pavement of
Berlin's great avenues, had started off towards the airfield to which Hitler had
called together all Germans. All Germany would follow the rally as it was
transmitted nationwide by radio.

By noon hundreds of thousands of workers -
Hitlerites and non-Hitlerites - were massed on the vast field. The demonstrators
observed impeccable order. Hundreds of tables, quickly set up by the Party,
provided the ever-increasing throngs with sandwiches, sausages, and mugs of beer
at cost, to refresh the new arrivals after their march.

Everyone, of course, was standing, and would
remain so for up to fourteen hours.

A fabulous speaker's platform stood out
against the sky, three stories high, flamboyant with huge flags, as impressive
as a naval shipyard. As the hours went by, thousands of prominent figures took
their seats, including many members of the foreign diplomatic corps. By the
close of the day, a million and a half spectators stretched to the outermost
edges of the immense plain. Soldiers and civilians mingled together. Fanfares
sounded repeatedly. A political meeting no longer, it had become a festival, a
sort of fantastic Bruegelian kermess, where middle-class burghers, generals and
workers all met and fraternized as Germans and as equals.

Night fell and Hitler appeared. His speaker's
rostrum was indeed like the prow of a giant ship. The hundreds of beacons which
had illuminated the great sea of humanity were now extinguished. Suddenly,
Hitler burst forth from the dark, a solitary figure, high in the air, lit by the
dazzling glare of spotlights.

In the dark, a group of determined opponents
could easily have heckled Hitler or otherwise sabotaged the meeting. Perhaps a
third of the onlookers had been Socialists or Communists only three months
previously. But not a single hostile voice was raised during the entire
ceremony. There was only universal acclamation.

Ceremony is the right word for it. It was an
almost magical rite. Hitler and Goebbels had no equals in the arranging of
dedicatory ceremonies of this sort. First there were popular songs, then great
Wagnerian hymns to grip the audience. Germany has a passion for orchestral
music, and Wagner taps the deepest and most secret vein of the German soul, its
romanticism, its inborn sense of the powerful and the grand.

Meanwhile the hundreds of flags floated above
the rostrum, redeemed from the darkness by arrows of light.

Now Hitler strode to the rostrum. For those
standing at the of the field, his face must have appeared vanishingly small, but
his words flooded instantaneously across the acres of people in his audience.

A Latin audience would have preferred a voice
less harsh, more delicately expressive. But there was no doubt that Hitler spoke
to the psyche of the German people.

Germans have rarely had the good fortune to
experience the enchantment of the spoken word. In Germany, the tone has always
been set by ponderous speakers, more fond of elephantine pedantry than
oratorical passion. Hitler, as a speaker, was a prodigy, the greatest orator of
his century. He possessed, above all, what the ordinary speaker lacks: a
mysterious ability to project power.

A bit like a medium or sorcerer, he was
seized, even transfixed, as he addressed a crowd. It responded to Hitler's
projection of power, radiating it back, establishing, in the course of myriad
exchanges, a current that both orator and audience gave to and drew from
equally. One had to personally experience him speaking to understand this
phenomenon.

This special gift is what lay at the basis of
Hitler's ability to win over the masses. His high-voltage, lightning-like
projection transported and transformed all who experienced it. Tens of millions
were enlightened, riveted and inflamed by the fire of his anger, irony, and
passion.

By the time the cheering died away that May
first evening, hundreds of thousands of previously indifferent or even hostile
workers who had come to Tempelhof at the urging of their labor federation
leaders were now won over. They had become followers, like the SA stormtroopers
whom so many there that evening had brawled with in recent years.

The great human sea surged back from Tempelhof
to Berlin. A million and a half people had arrived in perfect order, and their
departure was just as orderly. No bottlenecks halted the cars and busses. For
those of us who witnessed it, this rigorous, yet joyful, discipline of a
contented people was in itself a source of wonder. Everything about the May Day
mass meeting had come off as smoothly clockwork.

The memory of that fabulous crowd thronging
back to the center of Berlin will never leave me. A great many were on foot.
Their faces were now different faces, as though they had been imbued with a
strange and totally new spirit. The non-Germans in the crowd were as if stunned,
and no less impressed than Hitler's fellow countrymen.

The French ambassador, Andrй Franзois-Poncet,
noted:

The foreigners on the speaker's platform as
guests of honor were not alone in carrying away the impression of a truly
beautiful and wonderful public festival, an impression that was created by the
regime's genius for organization, by the night time display of uniforms, by the
play of lights, the rhythm of the music, by the flags and the colorful
fireworks; and they were not alone in thinking that a breath of reconciliation
and unity was passing over the Third Reich.

"It is our wish," Hitler had exclaimed, as
though taking heaven as his witness, "to get along together and to struggle
together as brothers, so that at the hour when we shall come before God, we
might say to him: 'See, Lord, we have changed. The German people are no longer a
people ashamed, a people mean and cowardly and divided. No, Lord! The German
people have become strong in their spirit, in their will, in their perseverance,
in their acceptance of any sacrifice. Lord, we remain faithful to Thee! Bless
our struggle!" (A. Franзois-Poncet, Souvenirs d'une ambassade а Berlin, p. 128.)

Who else could have made such an incantatory
appeal without making himself look ridiculous?

No politician had ever spoken of the rights of
workers with such faith and such force, or had laid out in such clear terms the
social plan he pledged to carry out on behalf of the common people.

The next day, the newspaper of the proletarian
left, the "Union Journal," reported on this mass meeting at which at least two
thirds - a million - of those attending were workers. "This May First was
victory day," the paper summed up.

With the workers thus won over, what further
need was there for the thousands of labor union locals that for so long had
poisoned the social life of the Reich and which, in any case, had accomplished
nothing of a lasting, positive nature?

Within hours of the conclusion of that
"victory" meeting at the Tempelhof field, the National Socialists were able to
peacefully take complete control of Germany's entire labor union organization,
including all its buildings, enterprises and banks. An era of Marxist
obstruction abruptly came to an : from now on, a single national organization
would embody the collective will and interests of all of Germany's workers.

Although he was now well on his way to
creating what he pledged would be a true "government of the people," Hitler also
realized that great obstacles remained. For one thing, the Communist rulers in
Moscow had not dropped their guard - or their guns. Restoring the nation would
take more than words and promises, it would take solid achievements. Only then
would the enthusiasm shown by the working class at the May First mass meeting be
an expression of lasting victory.

How could Hitler solve the great problem that
had defied solution by everyone else (both in Germany and abroad): putting
millions of unemployed back to work?

What would Hitler do about wages? Working
hours? Leisure time? Housing? How would he succeed in winning, at long last,
respect for the rights and dignity of the worker?

How could men's lives be improved -
materially, morally, and, one might even say, spiritually? How would he proceed
to build a new society fit for human beings, free of the inertia, injustices and
prejudices of the past?

"National Socialism," Hitler had declared at
the outset, "has its mission and its hour; it is not just a passing movement but
a phase of history."

The instruments of real power now in his hands
- an authoritarian state, its provinces subordinate but nonetheless organic
parts of the national whole - Hitler had acted quickly to shake himself free of
the last constraints of the impotent sectarian political parties. Moreover, he
was now able to direct a cohesive labor force that was no longer split into a
thousand rivulets but flowed as a single, mighty current.

Hitler was self-confident, sure of the power
of his own conviction. He had no intention, or need, to resort to the use of
physical force. Instead, he inted to win over, one by one, the millions of
Germans who were still his adversaries, and even those who still hated him.

His conquest of Germany had taken years of
careful planning and hard work. Similarly, he would now realize his carefully
worked out plans for transforming the state and society. This meant not merely
changes in administrative or governmental structures, but far-reaching social
programs.

He had once vowed: "The hour will come when
the 15 million people who now hate us will be solidly behind us and will acclaim
with us the new revival we shall create together." Eventually he would succeed
in winning over even many of his most refractory skeptics and adversaries.

His army of converts was already forming
ranks. In a remarkable tribute, historian Joachim Fest felt obliged to
acknowledge unequivocally:

Hitler had moved rapidly from the status of a
demagogue to that of a respected statesman. The craving to join the ranks of the
victors was spreading like an epidemic, and the shrunken minority of those who
resisted the urge were being visibly pushed into isolation - The past was dead.
The future, it seemed, belonged to the regime, which had more and more
followers, which was being hailed everywhere and suddenly had sound reasons on
its side.

"Our power," Hitler was now able to declare,
"no longer belongs to any territorial fraction of the Reich, nor to any single
class of the nation, but to the people in its totality."

Much still remained to be done, however. So
far, Hitler had succeeded in clearing the way of obstacles to his program. Now
the time to build had arrived.

So many others had failed to tackle the many
daunting problems that were now his responsibility. Above all, the nation
demanded a solution to the great problem of unemployment. Could Hitler now
succeed where others had so dismally failed?

V. Where To Find The Billions?

As he stood, silent and preoccupied, at his
chancellery window on that January evening, receiving the acclaim of the crowd,
Hitler was seized with anxiety - and not without reason.

In his memoirs, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht recalled:
"I had the impression that he was a man fairly crushed by the weight of the
responsibility he was taking on - That profound emotional upheaval of which I
was a witness could not possibly have been mere playacting: it betrayed true
feelings." (H. Schacht, Mйmoires d'un magicien, vol. II, p. 52.)

Hitler, however, was a man capable of
overcoming such anxieties. Although he faced an agonizing national tragedy -
immense unemployment, general misery, almost total industrial stagnation - which
no other politician had been able even to ameliorate, this youthful leader would
take on this challenge with an extraordinary sense of purpose and will.

Hitler had no sooner been voted plenary powers
than he rolled up his shirt-sleeves, and begun to carry out his well-laid plans.

Unlike the other responsible - or
irresponsible - politicians of twentieth-century Europe, Hitler did not believe
that fighting for his country's economic health meant having to impassively
accept one setback after another, stand idly by while industries died, or look
on as millions of unemployed workers tramped the streets.

In those days, the only solution to these
problems that was accepted by politicians and economists in the democracies was
to drastically cut sping, both governmental and private. Belt-tightening was the
agreed-upon remedy.

Thus, Germany's leaders prior to Hitler had
cut salaries by 25 percent, limited payment of unemployment benefits to six
months, and reduced total private investment by five sixths. The country's
standard of living had collapsed like a deflated balloon. At the end of six
months the unemployed obviously had not found new jobs. To the contrary, they
were joined by long lines of new unemployed. Deprived of all means of
subsistence, they gravitated to the welfare offices.

People spent less and less, with the
inevitable consequence that industries producing consumer goods closed their
doors, one after another, for lack of orders, thereby sending thousands more
unemployed into the streets. In 1932, Germany's industries were languishing,
their production reduced by half.

Yearly private investment had fallen from
three billion marks to barely 500 million. No new blood had been injected into
the industrial system, no workplaces modernized. The economy stagnated.

The government not only lacked any new
initiatives, it was almost bankrupt. Fiscal receipts had fallen to ten billion
marks, of which the meager and short-term unemployment benefits alone absorbed
two thirds.

Germany couldn't wait for a business upswing
to get the economy moving again. As Hitler had long understood, the government
had to bring economic renewal by bold action and imaginative enterprise.

Unemployment could be combated and eliminated
only by giving industry the financial means to start up anew, to modernize, thus
creating millions of new jobs.

The normal rate of consumption would not be
restored, let alone increased, unless one first raised the starvation-level
allowances that were making purchases of any kind a virtual impossibility. On
the contrary, production and sales would have to be restored before the six
million unemployed could once again become purchasers.

The great economic depression could be
overcome only by restimulating industry, by bringing industry into step with the
times, and by promoting the development of new products.

Because Germany had no petroleum, for example,
the production of synthetic gasoline (from coal) should be encouraged as much as
possible. The technique was already known, but it needed to be applied.
Similarly, Germany was able to produce an artificial substitute for rubber,
"Buna." But the plans for its development and production were still stored away
in file cabinets. Only a small percentage of practical new inventions ever left
the records files.

Great public works projects were another way
to create new jobs, stimulate industrial activity, and revive the economy. For
one thing, Germany's mediocre roads needed vast improvement. Moreover, the
demands of the time called for the construction of a national network of modern
highways. Radiating thousands of kilometers, these great concrete lifelines
would encourage increased commerce and communication among the Reich's many
regions.

New highways would also encourage increased
automobile production. Considering the potential, Germany was still quite
backward in automobile production. It manufactured only one-fifth as many cars
as France.

Nearly ten years earlier, while in his prison
cell, Hitler had already envisioned a formidable system of national highways. He
had also conceived of a small, easily affordable automobile (later known as the
"Volkswagen"), and had even suggested its outline. It should have the shape of a
June bug, he proposed. Nature itself suggested the car's aerodynamic line.

Until Hitler came to power, a car was the
privilege of the rich. It was not financially within the reach of the middle
class, much less of the worker. The "Volkswagen," costing one-tenth as much as
the standard automobile of earlier years, would eventually become a popular work
vehicle and a source of pleasure after work: a way to unwind and get some fresh
air, and of discovering, thanks to the new Autobahn highway network, a
magnificent country that then, in its totality, was virtually unknown to the
German worker.

From the beginning, Hitler wanted this
economical new car to be built for the millions. The production works would also
become one of Germany's most important industrial centers and employers.

During his imprisonment, Hitler had also drawn
up plans for the construction of popular housing developments and majestic
public buildings.

Some of Hitler's rough sketches still survive.
They include groups of individual worker's houses with their own gardens (which
were to be built in the hundreds of thousands), a plan for a covered stadium in
Berlin, and a vast congress hall, unlike any other in the world, that would
symbolize the grandeur of the National Socialist revolution.

"A building with a monumental dome," historian
Werner Maser has explained, "the plan of which he drew while he was writing Mein
Kampf, would have a span of 46 meters, a height of 220 meters, a diameter of 250
meters, and a capacity of 150 to 190 thousand people standing. The interior of
the building would have been 17 times larger than Saint Peter's Cathedral in
Rome." (W. Maser, Hitler, Adolf, p. 100.)

Hitler's imagination, therefore, had long been
teeming with a number of ambitious projects, many of which would eventually be
realized.

Fortunately, the needed entrepreneurs,
managers and technicians were on hand. Hitler would not have to improvise.

Historian Werner Maser, although quite
anti-Hitler - like nearly all of his colleagues (how else would they have found
publishers?) - has acknowledged: "From the beginning of his political career, he
[Hitler] took great pains systematically to arrange for whatever he was going to
need in order to carry out his plans."

"Hitler was distinguished," Maser has also
noted, "by an exceptional intelligence in technical matters." Hitler had
acquired his knowledge by devoting many thousands of hours to technical studies
from the time of his youth.

"Hitler read an endless number of books,"
explained Dr. Schacht. "He acquired a very considerable amount of knowledge and
made masterful use of it in discussions and speeches. In certain respects he was
a man endowed with genius. He had ideas that no one else would ever have thought
of, ideas that resulted in the ending of great difficulties, sometimes by
measures of an astonishing simplicity or brutality."

Many billions of marks would be needed to
begin the great socioeconomic revolution that was destined, as Hitler had always
inted, to make Germany once again the European leader in industry and commerce
and, most urgently, to rapidly wipe out unemployment in Germany. Where would the
money be found? And, once obtained, how would these funds be allotted to ensure
maximum effectiveness in their investment?

Hitler was by no means a dictator in matters
of the economy. He was, rather, a stimulator. His government would undertake to
do only that which private initiative could not.

Hitler believed in the importance of
individual creative imagination and dynamism, in the need for every person of
superior ability and skill to assume responsibility.

He also recognized the importance of the
profit motive. Deprived of the prospect of having his efforts rewarded, the
person of ability often refrains from running risks. The economic failure of
Communism has demonstrated this. In the absence of personal incentives and the
opportunity for real individual initiative, the Soviet "command economy" lagged
in all but a few fields, its industry years behind its competitors.

State monopoly tolls the death of all
initiative, and hence of all progress.

For all men selflessly to pool their wealth
might be marvelous, but it is also contrary to human nature. Nearly every man
desires that his labor shall improve his own condition and that of his family,
and feels that his brain, creative imagination, and persistence well deserve
their reward.

Because it disregarded these basic
psychological truths, Soviet Communism, right to the end, wallowed in economic
mediocrity, in spite of its immense reservoir of manpower, its technical
expertise, and its abundant natural resources, all of which ought to have made
it an industrial and technological giant.

Hitler was always adverse to the idea of state
management of the economy. He believed in elites. "A single idea of genius," he
used to say, "has more value than a lifetime of conscientious labor in an
office."

Just as there are political or intellectual
elites, so also is there an industrial elite. A manufacturer of great ability
should not be restrained, hunted down by the internal revenue services like a
criminal, or be unappreciated by the public. On the contrary, it is important
for economic development that the industrialist be encouraged morally and
materially, as much as possible.

The most fruitful initiatives Hitler would
take from 1933 on would be on behalf of private enterprise. He would keep an eye
on the quality of their directors, to be sure, and would shunt aside
incompetents, quite a few of them at times, but he also supported the best ones,
those with the keenest minds, the most imaginative and bold, even if their
political opinions did not always agree with his own.

"There is no question," he stated very firmly,
"of dismissing a factory owner or director under the pretext that he is not a
National Socialist."

Hitler would exercise the same moderation, the
same pragmatism, in the administrative as well as in the industrial sphere.

What he demanded of his co-workers, above all,
was competence and effectiveness. The great majority of Third Reich
functionaries - some 80 percent - were never enrolled in the National Socialist
party. Several of Hitler's ministers, like Konstantin von Neurath and Schwerin
von Krosigk, and ambassadors to such key posts as Prague, Vienna and Ankara,
were not members of the party. But they were capable.

While Hitler kept a close eye on opportunists
(such as Franz von Papen, who was both intelligent and clever) he knew how to
make the best use of such men, and to honor them and recognize their
achievements.

Similarly, he did not hesitate to keep on
competent bureaucrats chosen by his predecessors. A good example was Dr. Otto
Meissner, who had headed the presidential chancellery under the socialist Ebert
and the conservative von Hindenburg, and who had done everything in his power,
up to the last minute, to torpedo Hitler's accession to power. But Meissner knew
his work, and Hitler wisely kept him on the job. Hitler treated him with respect
and confidence, and Meissner served the the Fцhrer faithfully and efficiently
for twelve years.

Perhaps the most remarkable such case is that
of Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, the most discerning and competent of Germany's
financiers in 1933. A Hitler supporter? By no means! Schacht never was and never
would be a supporter of anyone but himself. But he was the best in the business:
for getting the Reich's economy moving again, he had no equal.

Ten years earlier, at the of 1923, Schacht had
financially rescued the Weimar Republic by helping to invent the "Rentenmark."
He was shrewd and imaginative, and thus capable of understanding and
implementing the boldest of Hitler's plans.

Schacht's personal ambition was immense, but
this was yet another reason for Hitler to give him every possibility to rise as
high as he could. Within weeks of taking power, Hitler appointed him President
of the Reichsbank, and then, a year later, as Economics Minister as well.
Schacht couldn't be happier.

Dangerous? Of course! Doubly so, inasmuch as
Schacht was a capitalist to the core, with close ties to major foreign banking
interests, not excluding Jewish financiers in London and New York. Moreover,
Schacht cared little for Hitler's revolutionary program, which regarded labor as
the true source of national wealth.

Hitler called on the brilliant Dr. Schacht to
devise new ways of acquiring the funds necessary for what he inted to
accomplish. That was a great deal, but it was all. The collaboration went no
further: Schacht was never permitted to intervene in political matters. When
Schacht's financial formulas had served their purpose, the collaboration would.
Until he was dismissed as Reichsbank president in 1939, Hitler made good use of
his extraordinary talents. But Schacht never forgave his dismissal, and would
nurse a seething resentment.

Determined to conjure up billions of marks as
quickly as possible, and by any means available, in early February 1933 Hitler
summoned Schacht's predecessor as Reichsbank president, Dr. Hans Luther, to his
office. Luther, who had been appointed to his post in 1930 by a previous
administration, had old-fashioned views of extreme prudence in the management of
state funds. Since the state's coffers were nearly empty, he was all the more
prudent. His detachable collar, stiff as a calling card, proclaimed the rigidity
of his principles. He belonged to the old school of accountants who spend a
dollar only when they have a dollar.

Hitler was well aware that this capable man
was not happy to be presiding over a central bank that lacked funds. It was not,
however, to have Luther empty the state treasury that Hitler had summoned him,
but to ask him to devise new means of financing Germany's recovery.

It was a question of imagination, but Luther's
brain was not a volcano of new ideas; it was a calculator.

"How much money," Hitler asked him, "can you
put at my disposal for creating jobs?" Luther Hesitated to respond immediately;
his mental calculator began functioning. After working out the calculations in
his mind, he responded as though speaking to the director of a large financial
firm: "One hundred and fifty million."

An eloquent answer, it showed just how
completely Hitler's predecessors and their colleagues were lacking in their
understanding of the scope of the resources that would be needed to save the
Reich. One hundred and fifty million, at a time when the German government was
pouring a billion marks every three months into unemployment benefits alone!

With a budget of 150 million marks, the German
treasury would have been hard put to spare even three or four marks a day to the
five or six or seven million unemployed over one short week.

Clearly, this question had never been put to
Dr. Luther, and no Reich leader before Hitler had ever troubled to learn how to
go about raising the funds that would be indispensable for carrying out a
serious program to put Germany back to work.

Obviously, then, Dr. Luther was not the person
to put Hitler's program into effect. The new Chancellor then thought of Schacht,
the sly old fox. He was always good for a trick, and now Hitler needed some of
his magic.

"Herr Schacht," he said, "we are assuredly in
agreement on one point: no other single task facing the government at the moment
can be so truly urgent as conquering unemployment. That will take a lot of
money. Do you see any possibility of finding it apart from the Reichsbank?" And
after a moment, he added: "How much would it take? Do you have any idea?"

Wishing to win Schacht over by appealing to
his ambition, Hitler smiled and then asked: "Would you be willing to once again
assume presidency of the Reichsbank?" Schacht let on that he had a sentimental
concern for Dr. Luther, and did not want to hurt the incumbent's feelings.
Playing along, Hitler reassured Schacht that he would find an appropriate new
job elsewhere for Luther.

Schacht then pricked up his ears, drew himself
up, and focused his big round eyes on Hitler: "Well, if that's the way it is,"
he said, "then I am ready to assume the presidency of the Reichsbank again."

His great dream was being realized. Schacht
had been president of the Reichsbank between 1923 and 1930, but had been
dismissed. Now he would return in triumph. He felt vindicated. Within weeks, the
ingenious solution to Germany's pressing financial woes would burst forth from
his inventive brain.

"It was necessary," Schacht later explained,
"to discover a method that would avoid inflating the investment holdings of the
Reichsbank immoderately and consequently increasing the circulation of money
excessively."

"Therefore," he went on, "I had to find some
means of getting the sums that were lying idle in pockets and banks, without
meaning for it to be long term and without having it undergo the risk of
depreciation. That was the reasoning behind the Mefo bonds."

What were these "Mefo" bonds? Mefo was a
contraction of the Metallurgische Forschungs-GmbH (Metallurgic Research
Company). With a startup capitalization of one billion marks - which Hitler and
Schacht arranged to be provided by the four giant firms of Krupp, Siemens,
Deutsche Werke and Rheinmetall - this company would eventually promote many
billions of marks worth of investment.

Enterprises, old and new, that filled
government orders had only to draw drafts on Mefo for the amounts due. These
drafts, when presented to the Reichsbank, were immediately convertible into
cash. The success of the Mefo program depended entirely on public acceptance of
the Mefo bonds. But the wily Schacht had planned well. Since Mefo bonds were
short-term bonds that could be cashed in at any time, there was no real risk in
buying, accepting or holding them. They bore an interest of four percent - a
quite acceptable figure in those days - whereas banknotes hidden under the
mattress earned nothing. The public quickly took all this into consideration and
eagerly accepted the bonds.

While the Reichsbank was able to offer from
its own treasury a relatively insignificant 150 million marks for Hitler's war
on unemployment, in just four years the German public subscribed more than 12
billion marks worth of Mefo bonds!

These billions, the fruit of the combined
imagination, ingenuity and astuteness of Hitler and Schacht, swept away the
temporizing and fearful conservatism of the bankers. Over the next four years,
this enormous credit reserve would make miracles possible.

Soon after the initial billion-mark credit,
Schacht added another credit of 600 million in order to finance the start of
Hitler's grand program for highway construction. This Autobahn program provided
immediate work for 100,000 of the unemployed, and eventually assured wages for
some 500,000 workers.

As large as this outlay was, it was
immediately offset by a corresponding cutback in government unemployment
benefits, and by the additional tax revenue generated as a result of the
increase in living standard (sping) of the newly employed.

Within a few months, thanks to the credit
created by the Mefo bonds, private industry once again dared to assume risks and
expand. Germans returned to work by the hundreds of thousands.

Was Schacht solely responsible for this
extraordinary turnaround? After the war, he answered for himself as a Nuremberg
Tribunal defendant, where he was charged with having made possible the Reich's
economic revival:

I don't think Hitler was reduced to begging
for my help. If I had not served him, he would have found other methods, other
means. He was not a man to give up. It's easy enough for you to say, Mr.
Prosecutor, that I should have watched Hitler die and not lifted a finger. But
the entire working class would have died with him!

Even Marxists recognized Hitler's success, and
their own failure. In the June 1934 issue of the Zeitschrift fьr Sozialismus,
the journal of the German Social Democrats in exile, this acknowledgement
appears:

Faced with the despair of proletarians reduced
to joblessness, of young people with diplomas and no future, of the middle
classes of merchants and artisans condemned to bankruptcy, and of farmers
terribly threatened by the collapse in agricultural prices, we all failed. We
weren't capable of offering the masses anything but speeches about the glory of
socialism.

VI. The Social Revolution

Hitler's tremendous social achievement in
putting Germany's six million unemployed back to work is seldom acknowledged
today. Although it was much more than a transitory achievement, "democratic"
historians routinely dismiss it in just a few lines. Since 1945, not a single
objective scholarly study has been devoted to this highly significant, indeed
unprecedented, historical phenomenon.

Similarly neglected is the body of sweeping
reforms that dramatically changed the condition of the worker in Germany.
Factories were transformed from gloomy caverns to spacious and healthy work
centers, with natural lighting, surrounded by gardens and playing fields.
Hundreds of thousands of attractive houses were built for working class
families. A policy of several weeks of paid vacation was introduced, along with
week and holiday trips by land and sea. A wide-ranging program of physical and
cultural education for young workers was established, with the world's best
system of technical training. The Third Reich's social security and workers'
health insurance system was the world's most modern and complete.

This remarkable record of social achievement
is routinely hushed up today because it is embarrasses those who uphold the
orthodox view of the Third Reich. Otherwise, readers might begin to think that
perhaps Hitler was the greatest social builder of the twentieth century.

Because Hitler's program of social reform was
a crucially important - indeed, essential - part of his life work, a realization
of this fact might induce people to view Hitler with new eyes. Not surprisingly,
therefore, all this is passed over in silence. Most historians insist on
treating Hitler and the Third Reich simplistically, as part of a Manichaean
morality play of good versus evil.

Nevertheless, restoring work and bread to
millions of unemployed who had been living in misery for years; restructuring
industrial life; conceiving and establishing an organization for the effective
defense and betterment of the nation's millions of wage earners; creating a new
bureaucracy and judicial system that guaranteed the civic rights of each member
of the national community, while simultaneously holding each person to his or
her responsibilities as a German citizen: this organic body of reforms was part
of a single, comprehensive plan, which Hitler had conceived and worked out years
earlier.

Without this plan, the nation would have
collapsed into anarchy. All-encompassing, this program included broad industrial
recovery as well as detailed attention to even construction of comfortable inns
along the new highway network.

It took several years for a stable social
structure to emerge from the French Revolution. The Soviets needed even more
time: five years after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, hundreds of thousands
of Russians were still dying of hunger and disease. In Germany, by contrast, the
great machinery was in motion within months, with organization and
accomplishment quickly meshing together.

The single task of constructing a national
highway system that was without parallel in the world might have occupied a
government for years. First, the problem had to be studied and assessed. Then,
with due consideration for the needs of the population and the economy, the
highway system had to be carefully planned it all its particulars.

As usual, Hitler had been remarkably
farsighted. The concrete highways would be 24 meters in width. They would be
spanned by hundreds of bridges and overpasses. To make sure that the entire
Autobahn network would be in harmony with the landscape, a great deal of natural
rock would be utilized. The artistically planned roadways would come together
and diverge as if they were large-scale works of art. The necessary service
stations and motor inns would be thoughtfully integrated into the overall
scheme, each facility built in harmony with the local landscape and
architectural style.

The original plan called for 7,000 kilometers
of roadway. This projection would later be increased to 10,000, and then, after
Austria was reunited with Germany, to 11,000 kilometers.

The financial boldness equalled the technical
vision. These expressways were toll free, which seemed foolhardy to conservative
financiers. But the savings in time and labor, and the dramatic increase in
traffic, brought increased tax revenues, notably from gasoline.

Germany was thus building for herself not only
a vast highway network, but an avenue to economic prosperity.

These greatly expanded transport facilities
encouraged the development of hundreds of new business enterprises along the new
expressways. By eliminating congestion on secondary roads, the new highways
stimulated travel by hundreds of thousands of tourists, and with it increased
tourism commerce.

Even the wages paid out to the men who built
the Reichsautobahn network brought considerable indirect benefits. First, they
allowed a drastic cut in payments of unemployment benefits, or 25 percent of the
total paid in wages. Second, the many workers employed in constructing the
expressways - 100,000, and later 150,000 - spent much of the additional 75
percent, which in turn generated increased tax revenues.

Imagine the problems, even before the first
road was opened for traffic, posed by the mobilization of so many tens of
thousands set to work in often uninhabited regions, in marshy areas, or in the
shadows of Alpine peaks! It's hard enough for 150,000 men to leave their homes
and camp out in often rough terrain. But in addition, it was necessary, from the
outset, to insure tolerable living conditions for the columns of men who had
agreed to work by the sweat of their brows under the open sky.

In France, it was all but unthinkable in those
days for a man out of work to move even 20 kilometers away to search for a new
job. He was practically glued to his native village, his garden, and the corner
cafe. The Germans were fundamentally no different, but by 1933 they were fed up
with their enforced idleness. By pouring concrete, using a pick, or whatever it
took, this hard-pressed people would bring dignity back in their lives.

No one balked at the inconvenience, the
absence from home, or the long journey. The will to live a productive and
meaningful life outweighed all other considerations.

To keep up the worker's morale and spirit,
lest he feel isolated or that he was merely being exploited, no effort was
spared to provide material comfort, entertainment and instruction. The world had
never before seen its like in any great construction project. At last, workers
felt they were being treated like respected human beings who had bodies to be
satisfied, hearts to be comforted, and brains to be enlightened.

Camp sites, supply bases, and recreation
facilities were systematically set up, with everything moving forward
methodically as the construction advanced. Fourteen mobile crews that provided
motion picture entertainment traveled along, moving from one construction site
to the next. And always and everywhere, labor was honored and celebrated.

Hitler personally dug the first spadeful of
earth for the first Autobahn highway, linking Frankfurt-am-Main with Darmstadt.
For the occasion, he brought along Dr. Schacht, the man whose visionary credit
wizardry had made the project possible. The official procession moved ahead,
three cars abreast in front, then six across, spanning the entire width of the
autobahn.

The Second World War would abruptly halt work
on this great construction undertaking. But what was envisioned and created
remains as a deathless testimony to a man and an era.

Hitler's plan to build thousands of low-cost
homes also demanded a vast mobilization of manpower. He had envisioned housing
that would be attractive, cozy, and affordable for millions of ordinary German
working-class families. He had no intention of continuing to tolerate, as his
predecessors had, cramped, ugly "rabbit warren" housing for the German people.
The great barracks-like housing projects on the outskirts of factory towns,
packed with cramped families, disgusted him.

The greater part of the houses he would build
were single story, detached dwellings, with small yards where children could
romp, wives could grow vegetable and flower gardens, while the bread-winners
could read their newspapers in peace after the day's work. These single-family
homes were built to conform to the architectural styles of the various German
regions, retaining as much as possible the charming local variants.

Wherever there was no practical alternative to
building large apartment complexes, Hitler saw to it that the individual
apartments were spacious, airy and enhanced by surrounding lawns and gardens
where the children could play safely.

The new housing was, of course, built in
conformity with the highest standards of public health, a consideration
notoriously neglected in previous working-class projects.

Generous loans, amortizable in ten years, were
granted to newly married couples so they could buy their own homes. At the birth
of each child, a fourth of the debt was cancelled. Four children, at the normal
rate of a new arrival every two and a half years, sufficed to cancel the entire
loan debt.

Once, during a conversation with Hitler, I
expressed my astonishment at this policy. "But then, you never get back the
total amount of your loans?," I asked. "How so?" he replied, smiling. "Over a
period of ten years, a family with four children brings in much more than our
loans, through the taxes levied on a hundred different items of consumption."

As it happened, tax revenues increased every
year, in proportion to the rise in expitures for Hitler's social programs. In
just a few years, revenue from taxes tripled. Hitler's Germany never experienced
a financial crisis.

To stimulate the moribund economy demanded the
nerve, which Hitler had, to invest money that the government didn't yet have,
rather than passively waiting - in accordance with "sound" financial principles
- for the economy to revive by itself.

Today, our whole era is dying economically
because we have succumbed to fearful hesitation. Enrichment follows investment,
not the other way around.

Since Hitler, only Ronald Reagan has seemed to
understand this. As President, he realized that to restore prosperity in the
United States meant boldly stimulating the economy with credits and a drastic
reduction in taxes, instead of waiting for the country to emerge from economic
stagnation on its own.

Even before the year 1933 had ended, Hitler
had succeeded in building 202,119 housing units. Within four years he would
provide the German people with nearly a million and a half (1,458,128) new
dwellings!

Moreover, workers would no longer be exploited
as they had been. A month's rent for a worker could not exceed 26 marks, or
about an eighth of the average wage then. Employees with more substantial
salaries paid monthly rents of up to 45 marks maximum.

Equally effective social measures were taken
in behalf of farmers, who had the lowest incomes. In 1933 alone 17,611 new farm
houses were built, each of them surrounded by a parcel of land one thousand
square meters in size. Within three years, Hitler would build 91,000 such
farmhouses. The rental for such dwellings could not legally exceed a modest
share of the farmer's income. This unprecedented owment of land and housing was
only one feature of a revolution that soon dramatically improved the living
standards of the Reich's rural population.

The great work of national construction rolled
along. An additional 100,000 workers quickly found employment in repairing the
nation's secondary roads. Many more were hired to work on canals, dams, drainage
and irrigation projects, helping to make fertile some of nation's most barren
regions.

Everywhere industry was hiring again, with
some firms - like Krupp, IG Farben and the large automobile manufacturers -
taking on new workers on a very large scale. As the country became more
prosperous, car sales increased by more than 80,000 units in 1933 alone.
Employment in the auto industry doubled. Germany was gearing up for full
production, with private industry leading the way.

The new government lavished every assistance
on the private sector, the chief factor in employment as well as production.
Hitler almost immediately made available 500 million marks in credits to private
business.

This start-up assistance given to German
industry would repay itself many times over. Soon enough, another two billion
marks would be loaned to the most enterprising companies. Nearly half would go
into new wages and salaries, saving the treasury an estimated three hundred
million marks in unemployment benefits. Added to the hundreds of millions in tax
receipts spurred by the business recovery, the state quickly recovered its
investment, and more.

Hitler's entire economic policy would be based
on the following equation: risk large sums to undertake great public works and
to spur the renewal and modernization of industry, then later recover the
billions invested through invisible and painless tax revenues. It didn't take
long for Germany to see the results of Hitler's recovery formula.

Economic recovery, as important as it was,
nevertheless wasn't Hitler's only objective. As he strived to restore full
employment, Hitler never lost sight of his goal of creating a organization
powerful enough to stand up to capitalist owners and managers, who had shown
little concern for the health and welfare of the entire national community.

Hitler would impose on everyone - powerful
boss and lowly wage earner alike - his own concept of the organic social
community. Only the loyal collaboration of everyone could assure the prosperity
of all classes and social groups.

Consistent with their doctrine, Germany's
Marxist leaders had set class against class, helping to bring the country to the
brink of economic collapse. Deserting their Marxist unions and political parties
in droves, most workers had come to realize that the less strikes and grievances
their leaders incited only crippled production, and thus the workers as well.

By the of 1932, in any case, the discredited
labor unions were drowning in massive debt that realistically could never be
repaid. Some of the less scrupulous union officials, sensing the oncoming
catastrophe, had begun stealing hundreds of thousands of marks from the workers
they represented. The Marxist leaders had failed: socially, financially and
morally.

Every joint human activity requires a leader.
The head of a factory or business is also the person naturally responsible for
it. He oversees every aspect of production and work. In Hitler's Germany, the
head of a business had to be both a capable director and a person concerned for
the social justice and welfare of his employees. Under Hitler, many owners and
managers who had proven to be unjust, incompetent or recalcitrant lost their
jobs, or their businesses.

A considerable number of legal guarantees
protected the worker against any abuse of authority at the workplace. Their
purpose was to insure that the rights of workers were respected, and that
workers were treated as worthy collaborators, not just as animated tools. Each
industrialist was legally obliged to collaborate with worker delegates in
drafting shop regulations that were not imposed from above but instead adapted
to each business enterprise and its particular working conditions. These
regulations had to specify "the length of the working day, the time and method
of paying wages, and the safety rules, and to be posted throughout the factory,"
within easy access of both the worker whose interests might be angered and the
owner or manager whose orders might be subverted.

The thousands of different, individual
versions of such regulations served to create a healthy rivalry, with every
factory group vying to outdo the others in efficiency and justice.

One of the first reforms to benefit German
workers was the establishment of paid vacations. In France, the leftist Popular
Front government would noisily claim, in 1936, to have originated legally
mandated paid vacations - and stingy ones at that, only one week per year. But
it was actually Hitler who first established them, in 1933 - and they were two
or three times more generous.

Under Hitler, every factory employee had the
legal right to paid vacation. Previously, paid vacations had not normally exceed
four or five days, and nearly half of the younger workers had no vacation time
at all. If anything, Hitler favored younger workers; the youngest workers
received more generous vacations. This was humane and made sense: a young person
has more need of rest and fresh air to develop his maturing strength and vigor.
Thus, they enjoyed a full 18 days of paid vacation per year.

Today, more than half a century later, these
figures have been surpassed, but in 1933 they far exceeded European norms.

The standard vacation was twelve days. Then,
from the age of 25 on, it went up to 18 days. After ten years with the company,
workers got a still longer vacation: 21 days, or three times what the French
socialists would grant the workers of their country in 1936.

Hitler introduced the standard forty-hour work
week in Europe. As for overtime work, it was now compensated, as nowhere else in
the continent at the time, at an increased pay rate. And with the eight-hour
work day now the norm, overtime work became more readily available.

In another innovation, work breaks were made
longer: two hours each day, allowing greater opportunity for workers to relax,
and to make use of the playing fields that large industries were now required to
provide.

Whereas a worker's right to job security had
been virtually non-existent, now an employee could no longer be dismissed at the
sole discretion of the employer. Hitler saw to it that workers' rights were
spelled out and enforced. Henceforth, an employer had to give four weeks notice
before firing an employee, who then had up to two months to appeal the
dismissal. Dismissals could also be annulled by the "Courts of Social Honor" (Ehrengerichte).

This Court was one of three great institutions
that were established to protect German workers. The others were the "Labor
Commissions" and the "Council of Trust."

The "Council of Trust" (Vertrauensrat) was
responsible for establishing and developing a real spirit of community between
management and labor. "In every business enterprise," the 1934 "Labor Charter"
law stipulated, "the employer and head of the enterprise (Führer), the employees
and workers, personnel of the enterprise, shall work jointly toward the goal of
the enterprise and the common good of the nation."

No longer would either be exploited by the
other - neither the worker by arbitrary whim of the employer, nor the employer
through the blackmail of strikes for political ends.

Article 35 of the "Labor Charter" law stated:
"Every member of an enterprise community shall assume the responsibility
required by his position in said common enterprise." In short, each enterprise
would be headed by a dynamic executive, charged with a sense of the greater
community - no longer a selfish capitalist with unconditional, arbitrary power.

"The interest of the community may require
that an incapable or unworthy employer be relieved of his duties," the "Labor
Charter" stipulated. The employer was no longer unassailable, an all-powerful
boss with the last word on hiring and firing his staff. He, too, would be
subject to the workplace regulations, which he was now obliged to respect no
less than the least of his employees. The law conferred the honor and
responsibility of authority on the employer only insofar as he merited it.

Every business enterprise of twenty or more
persons now acquired a "Council of Trust" (Vertrauensrat), two to ten members of
which were chosen from among the staff by the chief executive. The law's
implementation ordinance of March 10, 1934, further stated:

The staff shall be called upon to decide for
or against the proposed list in a secret vote, and all salaried employees,
including apprentices of twenty-one years of age or older, will take part in the
vote. Voting is done by putting a number before the names of the candidates in
order of preference, or by striking out certain names.

Unlike the enterprise councils (Betriebsrдte)
of pre-Hitler Germany, the Council of Trust was no longer a tool of one class.
Comprising members from all levels of the enterprise, it was now an instrument
of teamwork between classes. Obliged to coordinate their interests, former
adversaries in the workplace now cooperated in establishing, by mutual consent,
the regulations which determined working conditions.

The Council has the duty to develop mutual
trust within the enterprise. It will advise on all measures serving to improve
carrying out the work of the enterprise, and on standards relating to general
work conditions, in particular those that concern measures ting to reinforce
feelings of solidarity between the members themselves and between the members
and the enterprise, or ting to improve the personal situation of the members of
the enterprise commun-ity. The Council also has the obligation to intervene to
settle disputes. It must be heard before the imposition of fines based on
workshop regulations.

The law further required that, before assuming
their duties, members of the Work Council had to take an oath before all their
fellow workers to "carry out their duties only for the good of the enterprise
and of all citizens, setting aside any personal interest, and in their behavior
and manner of living to serve as model representatives of the enterprise."

Every 30th of April, on the eve of the great
national holiday of labor, Council terms ended and new elections were held. This
helped to weed out incompetence, overcome stagnation, and prevent arrogance or
careerism on the part of Council members.

The business enterprise paid a salary to each
Council member, just as if he were employed in the office or on the shop floor,
and had to "assume all costs resulting from the regular fulfillment of the
duties of the Council."

The second institution established to insure
the orderly development of the new German social system was the "Labor
Commission" (Reichstreuhдnder der Arbeit), the members of which were essentially
conciliators and arbitrators. They were charged with dealing with and overcoming
the inevitable frictions of the workplace. It was their function to see to it
that the Councils of Trust functioned harmoniously and efficiently, and to
ensure that a given business enterprise's regulations were carried out to the
letter.

Each of the thirteen Labor Commissions
operated in its own district of the Reich. As arbitrators, they were independent
of owners and employees.

Appointed by the state, they represented
rather the interests of everyone in the enterprise, and the interests of the
national community. To minimize arbitrary or unfounded rulings, the Labor
Commissions relied on the advice of a "Consultative Council of Experts,"
consisting of 18 members selected from a cross section of the economy in each
territorial district. As a further safeguard of impartiality, a third agency was
superimposed on the Councils of Trust and the thirteen Commissions: the
Tribunals of Social Honor.

Through these institutions, the German worker,
from 1933 on, could count on a system of justice created especially for him,
empowered to "adjudicate all grave infractions of the social duties based on the
enterprise community." Examples of such "violations of social honor" were cases
in which an employer, abusing his power, mistreated his staff, or impugned the
honor of his subordinates; in which a staff member threatened the harmony of the
workplace by spiteful agitation; or in which a Council member misused or
published confidential business information discovered in the course of his
work.

Thirteen "Courts of Social Honor,"
corresponding to the 13 Commissions, were established. The presiding judge was
not a party hack or ideologue; he was a career jurist, above narrow interest.
The enterprise concerned played a role in the Tribunal's proceedings: two
assistant judges, one representing management, the other a member of the Council
of Trust, assisted the presiding judge.

Each Court of Social Honor (Ehrengericht),
like any other court of law, had the means to enforce its decisions. There were
nuances, though. In mild cases, decisions might be limited to a reprimand. In
more serious cases, the guilty party could be fined up to 10,000 marks. Special
sanctions, precisely adapted to the circumstances, were provided for. These
included mandatory change of employment and dismissal of a chief executive, or
his agent, who was found delinquent in his duty. In the event of a contested
decision, the finding could be appealed to a Supreme Court in Berlin - yet
another level of protection.

In the Third Reich, the worker knew that
"exploitation of his physical strength in bad faith or in violation of his
honor" was no longer tolerated. He had obligations to the community, but he
shared these obligations with every other member of the enterprise, from the
chief executive to the messenger boy. Finally, the German worker had clearly
defined social rights, which were arbitrated and enforced by indepent agencies.
And while all this had been achieved in an atmosphere of justice and moderation,
it nevertheless constituted a genuine social revolution.

By the of 1933, the first effects of Hitler's
revolution in the workplace were being felt. Germany had already come a long way
from the time when grimy bathrooms and squalid courtyards were the sole sanitary
and recreational facilities available to workers.

Factories and shops, large and small, were
altered or transformed to conform to the strictest standards of cleanliness and
hygiene: interiors, so often dark and stifling, were opened up to light; playing
fields were constructed; rest areas where workers could unbend during break,
were set aside; employee cafeterias and respectable locker rooms were opened.
The larger industrial establishments, in addition to providing the normally
required conventional sports facilities, were obliged to put in swimming pools!

In just three years, these achievements would
reach unimagined heights: more than two thousand factories refitted and
beautified; 23,000 work premises modernized; 800 buildings designed exclusively
for meetings; 1,200 playing fields; 13,000 sanitary facilities; 17,000
cafeterias.

To assure the healthy development of the
working class, physical education courses were instituted for younger workers.
Some 8,000 were eventually organized. Technical training was equally emphasized.
Hundreds of work schools, and thousands of technical courses were created. There
were examinations for professional competence, and competitions in which
generous prizes were awarded to outstanding masters of their craft.

Eight hundred departmental inspectors and
17,300 local inspectors were employed to conscientiously monitor and promote
these improvements.

To provide affordable vacations for German
workers on a hitherto unprecedented scale, Hitler established the "Strength
through Joy" program. As a result, hundreds of thousands of workers were now
able to make relaxing vacation trips on land and sea each summer. Magnificent
cruise ships were built, and special trains brought vacationers to the mountains
and the seashore. In just a few years, Germany's working-class tourists would
log a distance equivalent to 54 times the circumference of the earth! And thanks
to generous state subsidies, the cost to workers of these popular vacation
excursions was nearly insignificant.

Were Hitler's reforms perfect? Doubtless there
were flaws, blunders and drawbacks. But what were a few inevitable mistakes
beside the immense achievements?

Was Hitler's transformation of the lot of the
working class authoritarian? Without a doubt. And yet, for a people that had
grown sick and tired of anarchy, this new authoritarianism wasn't regarded as an
imposition. In fact, people have always accepted a strong man's leadership.

In any case, there is no doubt that the
attitude of the German working class, which was still two-thirds non-Nazi at the
start of 1933, soon changed completely. As Belgian author Marcel Laloire noted
at the time:

When you make your way through the cities of
Germany and go into the working-class districts, go through the factories, the
construction yards, you are astonished to find so many workers on the job
sporting the Hitler insignia, to see so many flags with the swastika, black on a
bright red background, in the most densely populated districts.

Hitler's "German Labor Front" (Deutsche
Arbeitsfront), which incorporated all workers and employers, was for the most
part eagerly accepted. The steel spades of the sturdy young lads of the
"National Labor Service" (Reichsarbeitsdienst) could also be seen gleaming along
the highways.

Hitler created the National Labor Service not
only to alleviate unemployment, but to bring together, in absolute equality, and
in the same uniform, both the sons of millionaires and the sons of the poorest
families for several months' common labor and living.

All performed the same work, all were subject
to the same discipline; they enjoyed the same pleasures and benefited from the
same physical and moral development. At the same construction sites and in the
same barracks, Germans became conscious of what they had in common, grew to
understand one another, and discarded their old prejudices of class and caste.

After a hitch in the National Labor Service, a
young worker knew that the rich man's son was not a pampered monster, while the
young lad of wealthy family knew that the worker's son had no less honor than a
nobleman or an heir to riches; they had lived and worked together as comrades.
Social hatred was vanishing, and a socially united people was being born.

Hitler could go into factories - something few
men of the so-called Right would have risked in the past - and hold forth to
crowds of workers, at times in the thousands, as at the huge Siemens works. "In
contrast to the von Papens and other country gentlemen," he might tell them, "in
my youth I was a worker like you. And in my heart of hearts, I have remained
what I was then."

During his twelve years in power, no untoward
incident ever occurred at any factory he visited. Hitler was at home when he
went among the people, and he was received like a member of the family returning
home after making a success of himself.

But the Chancellor of the Third Reich wanted
more than popular approval. He wanted that approval to be freely, widely, and
repeatedly expressed by popular vote. No people was ever be more frequently
asked for their electoral opinion than the German people of that era - five
times in five years.

For Hitler, it was not enough that the people
voted from time to time, as in the previous democratic system. In those days,
voters were rarely appealed to, and when they expressed an opinion, they were
often ill-informed and apathetic. After an election, years might go by, during
which the politicians were heedless and inaccessible, the electorate powerless
to vote on their actions.

To enable the German public to express its
opinion on the occasion of important events of social, national, or
international significance, Hitler provided the people a new means of approving
or rejecting his own actions as Chancellor: the plebiscite.

Hitler recognized the right of all the people,
men and women alike, to vote by secret ballot: to voice their opinion of his
policies, or to make a well-grounded judgment on this or that great decision in
domestic or foreign affairs. Rather than a formalistic routine, democracy became
a vital, active program of supervision that was renewed annually.

The articles of the "Plebiscite Law" were
brief and clear:

1. The Reich government may ask the people
whether or not it approves of a measure planned by or taken by the government.
This may also apply to a law.

2. A measure submitted to plebiscite will be
considered as established when it receives a simple majority of the votes. This
will apply as well to a law modifying the Constitution.

3. If the people approves the measure in
question, it will be applied in conformity with article III of the Law for
Overcoming the Distress of the People and the Reich.

The Reich Interior Ministry is authorized to
take all legal and administrative measures necessary to carry out this law.

Berlin, July 14, 1933.

Hitler, Frick

The electoral pledge given by Hitler that day
was not vain rhetoric. One national referendum followed another: in 1933, in
1934, in 1936, and in 1938, not to mention the Saar plebiscite of 1935, which
was held under international supervision.

The ballot was secret, and the voter was not
constrained. No one could have prevented a German from voting no if he wished.
And, in fact, a certain number did vote no in every plebiscite. Millions of
others could just as easily have done the same. However, the percentage of "No"
votes remained remarkably low - usually under ten percent. In the Saar region,
where the plebiscite of January 1935 was supervised from start to finish by the
Allies, the result was the same as in the rest of the Reich: more than 90
percent voted "Yes" to unification with Hitler's Germany! Hitler had no fear of
such secret ballot plebiscites because the German people invariably supported
him.

From the first months of 1933, his
accomplishments were public fact, for all to see. Before end of the year,
unemployment in Germany had fallen from more than 6,000,000 to 3,374,000. Thus,
2,627,000 jobs had been created since the previous February, when Hitler began
his "gigantic task!" A simple question: Who in Europe ever achieved similar
results in so short a time?

More than two and a half million working-class
homes once again knew bread and joy; more than ten million men, women and
children of the working class, after years of want, had regained their vigor,
and had been returned to the national community.

Hitler's popularity took on some astonishing,
indeed comical, aspects. "A brand of canned herring," Joachim Fest relates, "was
called 'Good Adolf.' Coin banks were made in the form of SA caps. Bicarbonate of
soda was recommended with the advertising slogan 'My Struggle (Mein Kampf)
against flatulence'! Pictures of Hitler appeared on neckties, handkerchiefs,
pocket mirrors, and the swastika decorated ash trays and beer mugs, or served as
an advertisement for a brand of margarine." Annoyed by such fawning (and
exploitative) use of his name, and the emblem of his party, Hitler ordered that
it be discontinued immediately.

The economic and social transformation of the
Reich impressed observers no less than the political transformation wrought by
the leader of National Socialism. Gottfried Benn, Germany's greatest poet of
that era - and a man of the Left - wrote to an expatriate friend, Klaus Mann:

I personally declare myself in favor of the
new State, because it is my people that is making its way now. Who am I to
exclude myself; do I know anything better? No! Within the limits of my powers I
can try to guide the people to where I would like to see it - My intellectual
and economic existence, my language, my life, my human relationships, the entire
sum of my brain, I owe primarily to this nation. My ancestors came from it; my
children return to it - There are moments in which this whole tormented life
falls away and nothing exists but the plains, expanses, seasons, soil, simple
words: my people. (See: J. Fest, Hitler, New York: 1974, p. 428.)

In his detailed and critical biography of
Hitler, Joachim Fest limited his treatment of Hitler's extraordinary social
achievements in 1933 to a few paragraphs. All the same, Fest did not refrain
from acknowledging:

The regime insisted that it was not the rule
of one social class above all others, and by granting everyone opportunities to
rise, it in fact demonstrated class neutrality - These measures did indeed break
through the old, petrified social structures. They tangibly improved the
material condition of much of the population. (J. Fest, Hitler, pp. 434-435.)

Not without reason were the swastika banners
waving proudly throughout the working-class districts where, just a year ago,
they had been unceremoniously torn down.